Now Playing: Shadow Madness

 I used to play this one early in the mornings, back when I was younger.

 Well, the first thing I noticed? This game looks awful. I mean, it was never a good looking game, but man, has it aged badly. The next thing that happens, is that the game thrusts you into combat and... man, is this needlessly complicated! As you go through menus, the enemies will pound you into the floor, since it takes place in real time! Who came up with this?!

 It's not all bad, the music is fairly good, and the writing is pretty sharp(Sounds like I'm quoting the back of the box, but I swear the writing is pretty fun, there are some very witty lines and exchanges).

 I've gone through the second boss(Counting Red Tom, who I think I wasn't supposed to be able to beat so early(I'm playing on Normal difficulty), since it could one shot Dart when it did its strongest move, but by spamming reviving items, using the Twitch attack and the summoning magic, I persevered and got some pretty strong armor. Then I beat Rockra, who guarded the road to Karillion and... saved right outside its doors. I'm having more fun than I was expecting!

Review #105: Tales of Destiny II

 It's Tales of Eternia in Japan, just saying.

 Tales of Destiny II was the second Tales of game to be released on the original Playstation, it was also named "Tales of Eternia" in Japan, but I guess since the Tales of franchise didn't have a solid foundation(Tales of Phantasia hadn't left Japan), they decided to make it look like a direct sequel. Like the other Tales of games, while it looks like an average JRPG, random encounters and all, battles take place in real time, on a 2-D plane, it is their staple after all!

 The story puts you in the role of Reid, a young man that wants nothing but to eat good meals and live a lazy, stress free life. His friend, Farah, is a do-gooder, who ropes him into aiding Meredy, a mysterious waif that comes from Celestia, a planet kept separated from Inferia by a barrier of sorts. Something I quite liked about this game, were the characters, both the main characters and the secondary cast, and the situations characters were placed in. For a Tales of game, it has a pretty fresh cast of characters, Reid, the hero, is anything but heroical(At least for most of the game), or Keele, a childhood friend, is pretty obnoxious even if he doesn't realize it. As for the troubles the characters get in, while none are too shocking, there are a couple of surprises.

 The game plays just like any other JRPG, you go from town to dungeon to town to dungeon ad nauseam. When outside towns, while walking around you may topple into a random encounter, these battles are played out in real time, you take control of one character and the CPU takes care of the other three. You can customize their behavior somewhat by tweaking some parameters or setting guidelines, but you can tell them to use an item or a spell at any time. As for the character you play as, you get normal attacks on the X button, and you can set Artes(Skills or spells) to the circle button plus a directional input. A unique gimmick on this particular game is Fringing, as you go through the game you'll gain the aid of Greater Craymels, and you can set them to either Keele or Meredy's Craymel Cage. Depending on how you arrange the Craymels, means who gets which spells, it's not exactly rocket science, but it does lend itself to experimentation.

 While combat is very fast paced and fun, I had some troubles early on in the game. Turns out you don't get a real healer until much later in the game, which made certain boss battles very hard. This is one of those RPGs in which hoarding items doesn't work, you are going to have to use them to heal up during battles. Cooking, which is done by buying ingredients, and can be done once after each battle, is another must during the early stages of the game. The game then gets another difficulty spike during the first half of the second disc, with enemies that just refuse to flinch, but after you get through the second hump, the difficulty remains there, more or less.

 There's plenty to do in Destiny II, from finding all the Wonder Chefs in each town, to a ton of sidequests and optional scenes that you just might need some kind of guide to find them all. There are also a handful of Hideouts to track, once you get the GPS, filled with hidden goodies. All in all, it lasts more than 30 hours, and beating the game earns you New Game+, that houses a new dungeon(You can also trick the game into thinking that you are in New Game+ by reloading your pre-last boss savefile after finishing the game and saving the Data on another slot...).

 The presentation is the most lackluster aspect of the game. Sprites, both on the main characters and on the enemies, should've used a couple more frames, animation just isn't too good. And the color palette that the game employs gives the game a somewhat washed out look. Music isn't particularly good, but I expected a bit more from a Tales of game, and the voice acting is terrible, these were the early days of Voice Acting in videogames after all!

 All in all? It's a fairly good game, it does have two annoying difficulty spikes, and it might not look too good, but the overall game is very entertaining, with lots to do and find. The cast of characters is fairly engaging as well, and it's nice to see such variety on the cast, since Tales of loves recycling certain tropes.
 7.0 out of 10.

Review #104: Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy

 The name sure is a handful.

 Dissidia is a real oddity, it's a one on one arena-based fighter featuring characters from most numbered Final Fantasy games. But it's not a simple fighter, oh no, it really tries to do its own thing, and it actually works pretty well.

 I'll get the gameplay out of the way first. Firstly, the camera is behind you, third person, almost all the time, and you are free to move around pretty large arenas. You can move in any direction, you can double jump, you can run on walls or rails at the push of a button, and you can dash towards your enemy. After you get used to moving around, then comes the fighting, there's two numbered gauges that you need to keep track of, HP and Bravery. Circle attacks sap your opponent's Bravery and adds it to your own, you can then press Square to use a Special Move that actually deals damage equal to your Bravery to their HP. It's way easier to understand when you play. If at any time your Bravery drops below zero, you enter Break status, where your attacks don't sap Bravery(But do add to yours) and you can't hurt their HP, you exit Break status by letting your Bravery raise back to its default number. There's two other gauges at play, Assist and EX. The Assist gauge is made up of two blocks, using one block lets you summon your partner to deal an attack that saps Bravery, while using two blocks makes them use an attack that deals your Bravery into damage. EX is raised by grabbing orbs that drops when you hit your opponent or grabbing the EX icons that appear on the stage, once it's full, you can enter EX mode that raises your stats and lets you use a special ender if you hit with a Bravery attack. While the camera is not perfect, it does a good job at keeping up with the action and not getting stuck behind objects, except when your opponent goes above you, in which case you depend on the D-pad to move the camera up. It sounds convoluted, but it's actually very easy to just pick up and start playing.

 It doesn't end there, something that I didn't like, but that's probably because I expected something more defined, is that everything in this game revolves around customization. There's actually five different currencies, Experience Points that go towards leveling up your characters, AP that goes towards mastering skills, KP that is used on Moogle Shops and can only be earned on Story modes, PP that is used to unlock stuff and Gil that is used to buy items. That's a lot of numbers. Going back to customization, you can actually attach 6 different "combos"(3 on air and 3 on ground) to the circle button, and then 6 Bravery Attacks. You earn both of these by leveling up, allowing you to somewhat tailor your character to your liking. Once again, as fun as this sort of customization this is, I would've preferred defined movesets, but that's just me. Besides Attacks, as you level up you also earn skills or passive attributes that you can set on your characters, thing is, you have a numbered gauge(I think the maximum is 450 at level 100), and each attack and skill "costs" a certain amount of points, so you can't equip everything you like. But by playing you earn AP, and mastering an skills greatly reduces their cost, so that you can equip more things at a time. It sounds like a grind, and it is, but there are ways to lessen it in the form of Calendar bonuses and equipment. Calendar bonuses means that, certain days, the amount of some of the currencies you earn is increased. You can increase these bonuses by buying them with PP, and you can increase the frequency of these bonuses by buying them with PP as well. Furthermore, you can also set a day so that every week, on that day, you earn bonuses on every currency.

 Going back to customization, there is another layer: equipment. Luckily, equipment is shared by everyone, so buying something for one characters means that everyone gets access to it, if they can equip it. I can see the value of this sort of customization, I do, but I would've preferred something that's more balanced, so that it doesn't matter what your equipment is, or what your level is, characters would be well balanced so that skill would do all the talking. Regardless, the game takes customization to another level by actually allowing you to somewhat tweak the mechanics so that you can create your own rulesets for use in Free Battles! This is actually really cool, as it can make for widely different experiences. The game also offers a Quest Creator, if you are so inclined, so that you can create custom quests for other players to take part in! If you are the sort of person that loves tweaking with stuff, this is your game.

 There are 3 different story modes in the game, Scenario 012 that follows the story of the six new characters and lasts a solid 10-20 hours, Scenario 013 that lasts twice as much and follows the 10 main characters, and lastly Scenario 000 that holds the game's toughest opponents. Story Modes have you traverse a rather bland overworld as you enter gates, once inside a Gate, the game enters into a grid, in which there are different types of enemies, items and an objective you have to reach. Enemies are stationery, so you can engage them at will, but sometimes you can just enter the objective and move on if you so wish. Besides Story Mode, you get Arcade Mode, Time Attack and Labyrinth Mode. To say that there is a lot to do and see is an understatement. Story Mode also has tons of fully voiced-cutscenes, and while the story is pretty dumb and needlessly convoluted, watching characters that you recognize interact with each other is pretty cool treat.

 There's about 32 characters, each one has 2 alternate costumes, and there are over 20 stages, even if some are just alternate versions of other stages. While the cast is not very diverse, as it consists of, mainly, very effeminate men, it does contain every main character and main villain of the first ten numbered Final Fantasy games. Most stuff has to be unlocked with PP, but there is an overabundance of extras to unlock, you won't be getting done with this game any time soon, and that is actually fantastic.

 Dissidia 012 boasts some great looking graphics, from the stages to the character models themselves. While some may be shocked at how effeminate some of the older characters look, they are actually very faithful to Amano's original art, the NES and SNES just couldn't do Amano's designs justice. Besides that, characters enjoy a great deal of detail on their models, and the stages themselves have tons of objects that break as your throw your opponent around, and there is no slowdown whatsoever. As for the music, every piece comes from Final Fantasy games, and you are bound to recognize a lot of tunes if you have been following the series. The soundtrack is huge, with more than a handful of songs already unlocked, and some that you need to(with PP). As for the voice-acting, it gets the job done. Not all voice actors are equally as good, but none of them are terrible.

 Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy is the first must-have title I have played on the PSP, there's just so much for the player to do, it just keeps on giving. The Gameplay, while hardly competitive, is very easy to get into.
 9.0 out of 10.

Review #103: Tales of VS

 Just a speck away from recommendable.

 It worked for Square-Enix and Final Fantasy, so Namco just had to try their hand at a fighting game spin-off from their own venerable, if somewhat  underrated on the west, franchise. While Dissidia went for a rather unorthodox approach, Tales of VS is much easier to grasp, but it has its fair share of shortcomings.

 For starters, this is a Japanese exclusive game, and I don't know a lick of Japanese, which means that I don't have the slightest idea of what the hell is going on, but there are 9 different story modes, each one lasts about 2 hours, presumably more if you don't skip every fully-voiced scene. Buyer beware, while you can be almost fine as long as you get some menu translations, and a translation for what each stat is, you'll be missing out on a lot of customization options that could, possibly, make the game much more entertaining.

 Battles take place over arenas filled with many platforms and, sometimes, hazards, such as rolling barrels or laser beams from the sides, and they support up to four players. Stages are rather dull, and despite the hazards, lifeless, but the 2D backgrounds behind the platforms are taken from various dungeons or landmarks from Tales games. Good news? Characters play almost just like they did on their original games, albeit limited to a 2D plane if they came from a 3D Tales of game. Besides jumping up and down, you get normal attacks and Artes. You can assign up to 4 artes on each character, they earn more as they level up(More on this later), and these consume TP(A secondary gauge below your HP bar). Then you also get guard, that protects against normal attacks, but you receive full damage from spells, and a magic guard(Guard plus down on the pad) that blocks magic but leaves you open to physical attacks. Lastly, items may pop up on the stage, and these range from healing items to damaging spells, and every time you pick one up, it's stored until you press triangle or lose it when you die.

 Characters are divided into two major classes, Warriors and Mages. Warriors are, by far, the best type of characters, as their artes are executed as soon as you press circle plus a direction on the pad. Mages, on the other hand, must take their sweet time casting the spells before they go off(But they deal major damage). First issue with this? Mages are completely useless in single player games, the CPU will gang up on you, and your ally won't even try to cover you as you chant your spell, so if you want a mage, have your ally CPU use it while you protect him. Then there's the fact that the camera doesn't cover the whole arena, while you get markers showing you were, offscreen, an enemy, is you will be running against the border of the screen, not knowing what awaits you. Very annoying. Even worse, the CPU loves grabbing items, you will find yourself chasing your running enemy every single time, and it behaves like this on every difficulty level. The cherry on top is that you won't even know where your enemy is running to, as the camera doesn't cover the whole arena, many times the item is offscreen, which also means that the CPU has the advantage of knowing where everything is.

 While I think most people would enjoy customizing each character, I would've preferred something more defined. Customizing means that you have to grind for experience points, to unlock the full moveset and raise individual stats, and for gold, to get weapons, armors, rings and skills for your character. Playing Arcade Mode with an underleveled character and a stronger partner means that you'll fight against two CPUs that match the level of your highest level character, making grinding for characters that don't have an story mode a bit of a chore. Speaking of Story Mode, these play out on a map, and while your main objective is to head towards the banners, there are crossed sword icons, touching these means engaging in a fight... These battles, at the beginning of the mode with your level 0 characters, are very challenging, so you are better off clearing a couple of main objectives in order to unlock the first items on the store for your characters, only then do these become fair. Stan's Story Mode is particularly annoying, as he gets no partner, but has to fight against two CPUs at all times, they will gang up on you and they will wreck you, specially early in the game when you have no equipment.

 As for content, you get 35 characters, the roster is pretty diverse, even if Legendia and Eternia only get one representative each. Even though this is a Japanese exclusive game, if you've been following the games that reached stateside, you will be familiar with 24 out of these 35 characters. Besides Story Mode, you get Arcade Mode, Survival Mode, Free Battle Mode and Special Battle. Special Battle has 20 challenges for you to complete, making you play as a set character with special conditions. Then there's the unlockable Tales of Wallbreaker, a 2D minigame, with its own roster of unlockable fighters, in which you try to break any of the two walls surrounding you and your opponent by throwing him or her against the walls. Fairly entertaining for such a small treat.

 Graphically, characters look very neat, with an stylized cell-shaded look that actually works pretty well. It's a very colorful game, and most animations are pretty cool looking, with a couple of odd looking ones sadly, bonus points for each character getting the Artes that he or she used in his or her game. As for the music, it's all taken from the games the characters represent, and the Story Mode scenes are fully voice-acted.

 Overall, it's a good game, but unless you are planning on playing it with real people, expect to be annoyed frequently. Sadly, the only way to unlock characters is to dredge through Story Modes, and then you have to grind battles in order to earn Experience(for that one character that you want to use) and gold to buy them their own equipment and skills... This game could've been so much better.
 6.0 out of 10

Review #102: Kirby - Return to Dreamland

 Suck your way to the top as you spit or swallow your enemies!

 Go out and buy this game now, not because of it's quality, but because it's a bit of a rarity, produced at the end of the Wii's life cycle, few copies were produced, and it's quickly becoming a very sought after item. But is the game any good? Long story short, it's your typical Kirby game.
 The story involved Magolor crashing his Lor Starcutter into dreamland, losing five key components in the process, and Kirby being the good fellow that he is, decides to help him gather all five pieces, alongside a Waddle Dee, King Dedede and Metaknight. Story was never, and never will be, Kirby's selling point, it's just there to give you a little bit of motivation, and it does hold a twist that most Kirby games pull, so you'll probably be expecting it. As simple as the story is, the cutscenes peppered throughout the game are incredibly charming, as silly and dull and the story is, I just couldn't stop myself from smiling at times.

 At its core, the game plays just like any other Kirby game, on a 2-D plane, with a multiplayer component. At any moment, a second player can hop in as either MetaKnight, King Dedede, Waddle Dee or a different colored Kirby, the former three behave like the Sword, Hammer and Javelin powers respectively. And now is when I get to call foul, player 1 cannot choose any other character. I understand how accessing hidden areas would be impossible if you couldn't pick other Powers, but I just want to play as MetaKnight, but the game won't let me because I'm player one. Not fun, let ME choose if I want to screw myself out of hidden areas. Besides that, the rest of the game is the usual Kirby fare, suck in enemies and swallow them to steal their Powers(If they have one) or shoot them out as a powerful projectile. You'll also have to do some jumping and avoid some obstacles as you search for hidden items.
 If you are expecting a hard as nails platformer, you are in the wrong place, but then again, people that say that Kirby is a "easy" game haven't really played Kirby. Kirby is not about getting through the levels, heck, Kirby can fly indefinitely and avoid most obstacles. The fun in Kirby comes in the form of collecting stuff, there's 120 hidden cogs to find, and many times, one single mistake means redoing the entire level, the developers were nice enough to make it impossible for you to kill yourself after said mistake, so there's no choice but redoing the stage. 'sides, beat the game and you unlock Arena and Extra Mode. Extra Mode cuts your life bar in half, places more enemies on each stage and gives them different sizes, the bigger ones can take more punishment. Doesn't end there, bosses get new palette swaps and new moves, there's also a new boss at the end of the game. Beat Extra Mode and you unlock the True Arena, which houses a second hidden boss.

 Besides multiplayer, there's a second new gimmick in the form of Super Powers. Every now and then you'll come across shiny enemies, eat one of these and you'll earn a Powered up version of Sword, Ice, Fire, Beam or Hammer. These are poorly implemented, as whenever you use it, it brings the game to a halt so that Kirby can strike a pose before unleashing the power. Some of them are more involved, like the Beam that you can move around or the Snowball that you can move about, but the others just have you, and other players if present, sitting as it goes off. Not fun. They are a poor addition to the series, even if cutting a rope with the Giant Sword is amusing the first time. Thankfully they are not the focus and they are only featured in a few levels.
 As for how it looks, the game is very colorful, filled with bright, solid colors. Enemies and objects in the game are very simple, with few details, the levels themselves fare much better, lots of tiny details everywhere, with different planes and objects, regardless, it hardly pushes the Wii's hardware, but as a whole, it's gorgeous. Music is very varied, from upbeat beats to more relaxing tunes, and they do tend to fit the levels they are in. Overall, it's all very cute, but nothing noteworthy.

 As one of the last Wii games produced by Nintendo, if not the last, it could've been a lot better, at the end of the day, what you've got is just another Kirby game that doesn't stand above or below its predecessors, nor does it try to stand out from them.
 7.0 out of 10.

Gundam Extreme VS Full Boost Impressions part 9

Delta Plus

 The successor or predecessor, depending on how you wanna see it, to the Hyaku Shiki, this unit plays nothing alike and is half as cool. It received minor tweaks here and there, but it's basically the same unit, it has a very slow melee and few tools to deal at long range, but at mid-range? It's a beast.

NEW Gundam Banshee

 This unit is so much fun, and a great alternative to the Unicorn Gundam. Unlike the Unicorn, Banshee is not much of a all-around unit, but rather a great mid-close range bruiser. It's got plenty of projectile tools for anything that's close and some rather fun tools for close encounters, to top it off, it has a Destroy Mode that buffs it and grants it new, stronger moves(Both close and long range). By default, it's a timed Mode, like the unicorn, but once it reaches about 25% health, it becomes permanent. To be honest, I think the 2500 cost is a bit too little for this beast.

Sinanju

 Now it has more HP and is bigger in size! Sinanju is Mobile Suit with two different modes, a really strong mid-range player and a form that sucks at everything but melee, plus, it way more mobile, it's faster and can propel itself by kicking asteroids(Which double as projectiles!). Looks really cool, but it takes some work to make the most of it.

Kshatriya

 Bumped down to 2000, which also means nerfs everywhere. It got some new ways to shoot its funnels. It's a decent all-around unit, particularly good at mid-range.

NEW Rozen Zulu

 A long range specialist, Rozen Zulu has some very awkward and unique looking attacks, so it may take some time getting used to it. I think it might be a good unit, but it's just not my style.

BONUS

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket

Gundam Alex

 Only got a couple of tweaks, it's the same Alex it used to be. For a 1000 unit, its damage output is quite high, at close range. Yes, Alex is a close-range 1000 unit, it has some tools for mid-range combat, but its melee is so good, and its armor lets him get in quite safely. To make the most out of the Alex, you probably need to master getting in and out of the armor.

Now Playing: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

 So, a mate came home and now I'm kinda stuck playing this one for March.

 Ever played Kirby? Well, more of the same. To be fair, movesets feel a bit more fleshed out, but it's the same old movesets you've used since the SNES!... Although, to be fair, I did come across a couple of new ones(Grass and Water, one is incredibly overpowered in an already easy game and the other is pretty fun to use).

 There's a new feature actually, Super versions of Powers, but they are to be used in specific places during certain stages, and I feel that they bring the game to a halt, as the screen darkens as Kirby strikes a little pose before using the power, quite underwhelming and dull.

 Multiplayer is fun 'n all, but why oh why does Player 1 get stuck as Kirby? I want to play as MetaKnight! So what if I get screwed out of collectibles, it should be my choice, and if there are other players involved, let them be Kirby and let me be Metaknight. Actually, players 1-3 can be either a different colored Kirby, Waddle Dee, Metaknight or Dedede, so unfair!

 Overall? It's alright, as most Kirby games are, nothing special. Wish they'd bring Kirby 64's power fusion back, now that was a fun gimmick!