Review #109: Orphen - Scion of Sorcery

 I call upon Sword of the Fallen Devil!

 Orphen - Scion of Sorcery was one of the early PS2 games, and the only Orphen game ever released. It tried to mix the action-adventure and RPG genres to mixed results, which probably explains why it never got a sequel.

 The game boasts an all new story, featuring the main characters from the Sorcerous Stabber Orphen anime, Orphen, Magnus(Magik), Clio(Cleao), Vulcan and Dortin are all here, and are joined by three new characters, Mar, Zeus and Sephy, all three who have lost someone important to them. The game offers three different routes, one for each newcomer, and in order to get the true ending, you'll have to go through all three. Each story is fairly alright, each one deals with slightly different subjects, all releated to the theme of loss. As for the main characters, they are a little bit different from their anime incarnations, they took the characters main traits and defined their personality around it, Orphen instead of being a jerk with a heart of gold is just a jerk, Cleao instead of being a tsundere, spends all her time whining(it quickly grows annoying)  and Magik instead of being a insecure trainee is just insecure.

 The game's adventure mechanics consist of playing as Orphen or one of the 5 allies(Zeus, Sephy, Mar, Magik and Cleao), jumping around, attacking bugs or evading traps. It sounds alright, but it's all very flawed. For instance, the camera is very unwieldy, it turns too fast, and the distance to the character is not ideal, getting a good angle through objects on a small room is a chore sometimes. As for the jumping, characters perform huge, gravity defying jumps, so sometimes seeing where you'll land is a bit tough. Then comes attacking, for some reason, only Orphen, Zeus, Zephy and Mar get attacks on Adventure portions, not that you'll use it much, there are very few enemies on this mode, and they are usually just bugs. Something that I found hilarious, is that you'll amass a ton of items(healing, bug stoppers and bug attractors, the latter two which you'll have to use, at most, only on one part in Mar's route), and the descriptions for the healing items are "Heals 10 hitpoints", "Heals 30 hitpoints", etc. Why so funny? The HP in the action-adventure portion is portrayed by a colored orb. How numbered hitpoints translate to colored orb is beyond me.

 Eventually, your walking and jumping will take you into scripted RPG-like battles. These are not random encounters, the amount of these battles is limited and they cannot be replayed. Most of the time you'll play as Orphen, sometimes you'll have your allies(CPU controlled) and other times you'll battle as Zeus, Mar or Sephy on their own. Mar, Sephy and Zeus can find equipment on the adventure portions, while Orphen gets spells that he learns every now and then after certain boss fights. All four of them can have up to three weapons/spells, which you'll use with X, Circle and Triangle, and you also get a block button in the form of Square. Battles are not turn based, however, after using an spell, Orphen loves to strike a pose, so you just can't use another spell right away. Your playable character remains stationed on his place, and you select your targets with the analog stick. The combat system is not terrible, but it feels a bit clunky and not much fun, and it's poorly thought out as well, the best way to dodge an attack, for instance, is to wait for the attacker to get close to your character, and engage a melee attack on a far away target, your character will rush towards his target, avoiding the attack of the nearby enemy!

 The game also has some rather "interesting" design choices. Saving can only be done after certain scenes, at which the game will promt a save screen, if you don't save then, you are out of luck until the next checkpoint, keep this in mind as I'll go back to this in a second. The game is filled with conversations at every turn. While it's entertaining at the start, the huge amount of these quickly turn tiresome as they are very, very dull. And they are unskippable. Remember how you can only save at certain moments? Well, if you die, it means back to that checkpoint, which means having to go through all of these unskippable, dull conversations. And Cleao's constant whining, obnoxious shouting is very grating to the ears, shame she gets so many scenes. There's a little trick to aid you, on the combat scenes, if you press start and go to change "equipment", you can restart a battle, if it is not going your way, it might be cheating for some, but it beats having to go through these annoying cutscenes again.

 Oh, presentation. Keeping in mind that this was an early PS2 release, it's not too bad. Environments are pretty big, when compared to PS1 games, and colorful, even if they feel a bit lifeless. Character models look alright when standing still, but when they move, you'll notice just how stiff the are. And sometimes they don't move their lips when they talk, but sometimes they do, it's very odd, and the way they move their mouths is so freaky that it's better when they don't! Still, there are a couple of anime cutscenes, they use a very different style from the Sorcerous Stabber Orphen anime, but they are still very good and pretty high quality. There's not a whole lot of music in the game, most of the time you'll be adventuring in silence, but the few tunes that the game employs are actually kinda good, if a bit generic-sounding for the genre. Voice acting is actually pretty good, sometimes the models and their stiffness don't convey well how the character sounds at the time, but it's alright.

 Orphen - Scion of Sorcery, is not a terrible game, it's actually pretty playable, but it simply has nothing going for it, nothing to stand out. For fans of the anime, it's probably alright, but otherwise it's best to skip it.
 5.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Final Fantasy VIII

 I shouldn't be having this much fun with it.

 Let's go back in time, back to when I was younger and Final Fantasy VIII was announced. Final Fantasy VII was my favorite game, and back then, when graphic leaps still meant something, I would salivate over screenshots from the game. And when it came out? I loved every second of it. I actually finished it, unlike VII. While my first experiences with both VII and VIII were on the PC, I did play the PS1 version of VII, but not VIII's, so this is kinda new for me.

 The core combat gimmick is terrible. While I can see how drawing magic and using it against the enemy that possesses it is amusing, having to stock on magic is a terribly dull time consuming experience, and each character has its own magic pool! Back when I was a kid, I didn't mind this system, but now that I'm older, I can see just how terrible it is, specially considering that this game came after the fantastic Materia system. There's no mana, now only your current HP is displayed, instead of getting both the max and the current HP, which is odd, and Limit Breaks can only be used when your HP drops to a certain point, instead of filling a gauge. Weapons are now made instead of bought(Though you can only "make" them at certain stores), money is earned through an allowance and not battling, and enemies level alongside you. Basically, every change was for the worst.

 And despite it all... I'm having fun. A lot has to do with me smiling at all the little things that I remember or am reminded of, but I'm still having fun.

Now Playing: Castlevania - The Dracula X Chronicles

 Classicvania, yeah!

 My first Castlevania game was Castlevania 64. While everyone hates it, or finds it acceptable at most, I liked it a lot(I was young). I think the second one I played was Symphony of the Night, I was very hyped for that one, as on the months leading up to the PS2 release, I was already thinking of all the awesome PS1 games I'd get to play, and Castlevania: SotN was one my most wanted ones. The game didn't disappoint, I fell in love with the metroidvania/castleroid genre. I did discover classicvania via Castlevania Chronicles, pink-haired Simon rules, and I loved that one as well. Throughout the years I've done my best to play every Castlevania I could, but one had always escaped me: Rondo of Blood. This changes now. Or whenever I unlock it.

 I'm up to Stage 3', and I know I will just have to use some kind of FAQ to keep up with all the secret routes and alternate stages and what not, but for now, I'm just limiting myself to the two unlockables, Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. But as for the remake itself... It's a blast. It's quite challenging(I might've gotten a game over on Stage 2, really), but the controls are very responsive. The game also looks fantastic, Ayami Kojima's style was translated pretty faithfully into 3D, and after going through Killzone, the brownest game on earth, this is pretty awesome.

 The best thing about this game? Not only is the main game pretty solid(So far), but you can unlock the classic Rondo of Blood version AND Symphony of the Night, how awesome is that?

Review #108: Killzone - Liberation

 The other "We got hacked" freebie.

 Making a FPS for the PSP should be nigh impossible, unless they go with the classic Doom route, but I digress. Guerilla brought Killzone to the PSP, but it is no longer an FPS, rather, an isometric shooter. I had never played a Killzone game before, nor am I interested in the franchise, but it was a freebie so I can't complain!

 The game puts you in the shoes of Templar, a guy fighting for the... good guys against the Helghast, a group of guys with luminous red eyes. And it's your mission to... bring them down? Yes, there is a story to the game, and it is told via text before each mission, and on cut-scenes every now and then. What's the problem? The text summaries take to long to pan out, I was willing to give the story a chance, but these "scenes" took too long to go from page to page, so I just gave up on it. It's not an interesting story, to a newcomer, anyways.

 The game consists of four chapters with four missions each. The first thing you need to learn, is that this is a very slow-paced game, while the isometric look could lead you to believe that this is an arcadey, fast run-and-gun game, you'd be wrong. Templar's running speed is pretty slow, and enemies can be deadly even when few in numbers, so you need to learn to take cover. You take cover by holding the R button, which makes Templar crouch, and you need to make use of your surroundings as cover, enemies will do so as well. And this is when you realize that this is a very slow paced game, as you'll be popping in and out of cover to shoot your enemies. Melee is somewhat of a gamble, as you have to press X when the prompt appears, but enemies sometimes get to hit you before your attack goes off, or sometimes Templar just won't react in time. Melee is unreliable, so you'd better just stick to your guns. Not that it's much fun either, the PSP only has one analog stick, so Aiming is relative to where you are looking at. While you do get a form of "soft-lock" on enemies close to where Templar is looking at, it's kinda unreliable, and guns don't have much accuracy... it's not much fun. You can hold L to "Strafe", but sometimes Templar will just break out of the strafe for no reason, or if you press L twice fast enough you perform a roll, sometimes, when trying to get the strafe right, you might accidentally roll into an enemy! The awkward controls coupled with the poor accuracy of the weapons make for a less than fun experience, as shootouts against one or two enemies can over extend their welcome, and many times deaths feel as if they were caused due to the controls and not your mistakes.

 Every now and then the game will give you a CPU ally, they are pretty self sufficient, and you can order them around with the directional D-Pad. Besides shooting bad guys, placing C4 or disabling mines, you'll also come across cases. These cases are worth "money", which further unlock weapons for you to start each level with or unlock upgraded versions. Speaking of weapons, Templar can only carry one weapon at a time, if you run out of ammo, you are outta luck. Levels have plenty of "stashes" placed throughout, where you can get more ammo, different weapons, health packs or grenades, so it's hard to run out of weapons. Lastly, clearing each chapter unlocks a small collection of Challenge levels, they come in a small variety of placing C4 in certain places, shooting targets or even surviving an endless slew of enemies for as long as you can, the latter being easily the most fun of the lot, while the others are passable. Scoring on these challenges unlocks "perks" for you to equip before each mission, these are small buff like carrying 3 or 5 grenades instead of two, or placing C4 faster, earning Gold on all challenges gives you infinite ammo! Each of the 16 missions lasts 10-30 minutes, but the challenges and finding all collectibles do offer a decent replay value.

 Graphics are... serviceable. They are nothing special, and the game is filled with greys and browns, definitely not a looker. Even worse, slowdown is a bit of a common occurrence, and can ruin your shooting, even if the slowdown, usually, doesn't last too long. Music is almost non-existent, and what little music there is, is very forgettable. Voice acting is alright, not that the dialogue  is anything special.

 Finally, the game does offer local Co-Op and Multiplayer... which I couldn't try since I don't know anyone else that has this game. It does seem like it could be interesting, though. Then there's also a downloadable fifth chapter, but since it's not on PSN and Killzone.com went down, you have to download it elsewhere and get it to you PSP via USB cable, which I don't own yet, so I couldn't try it either.

 Killzone: Liberation is a game I didn't enjoy. According to the Internet, it's a good game, so I might be on the minority here, but I just couldn't get over how slow-paced it is, and how awkward the controls were.
 4.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Orphen - Scion of Sorcery

 Another one from my younger years!

 And it blooooows! Animation? Laughable. Music? Small in quantity and uninspired in quality. Gameplay? Awful.
 So, there's like two modes: Adventure Mode, that sucks and has a terrible camera, and Combat Mode, that features one of the dumbest battle systems in RPG hist...? This ain't even an RPG, I don't know what this is, but it ain't an RPG.
 The "best" thing about it, is that you have to play the game three times to get the true ending, although to be fair, as far as I remember, all three paths are different. I hope. I chose to start with Zeus this time, then Sephy and I'll leave the kid for last. Oh well....

Review #107: Shadow Madness

 One of your party members is a disembodied head. Let that sink in for a minute.

 Ah, Shadow Madness, Craveyard's first and only game, it bombed so badly that they had to shut their doors. It was a bold move, make a JRPG in America with a team that was fairly inexperienced with the PS1, and it shows, featuring Ted Woolsey, of SNES Final Fantasy games fame. The end result is a game that had a lot of love put in, but a ton of odd choices in gameplay and how it plays out set it back, sinking it to the ground.

 The story tricks you into thinking that Stinger is the protagonist, as the game starts out with Stinger, generic rogue that dresses in red, narrating how his hometown is now a crater, his family dead, and grouping up with Windleaf, generic native-american girl that doesn't like to wear clothes, and Harvester-5, a robot with a barrel for a torso, a Scythe for harvesting enemy heads and a very dark sense of humor, there will be death indeed. Stinger and his friends eventually get involved with the Magi, sorcerers of great power, as they set out to save the world from an otherwordly invasion. Remember how I said that the game tricks you? As soon as you get your fourth party member, the party will start splitting up and taking different routes, with different objectives, Stinger is not the protagonist, this is an ensemble cast, and they get more or less the same development(Which means to say not a whole lot). This also means that, unlike most other RPGs, the rest of the cast is not on stand-by twiddling their thumbs, they are actually fighting alongside the rest of the characters, albeit on a different mission! The rest of the party is made up of a disembodied head that can talk and spit fireballs, he is Xero, the last of the Mage Warriors who lost his body years ago, Clemett, a gadgeteer, robot-like beings who you will soon become familiar with, and Jirina, an Org from the lands below that likes to dress up just like Windleaf, except that her thong is made out of iron instead of cloth.

 While Stinger and Windleaf look very generic and dull, (And Jirina too, to an extent, having blue skin and a metal visor save her from averagedom), the rest of the party members are pretty original. Speaking of original, the whole party loves to rag on each other endlessly, few times they see eye to eye, even when they are on the same quest, and they bicker and argue constantly. This is not your average party of heroes. Having the party split up on pre-set groups also helps, as the game likes to mix characters in every split, so you get to watch them interact with each other. Enemy design isn't so lucky, sadly. In spite of that, the world of the game is very interesting, featuring a fair amount of races that share the world of Arkose, and you'll get to meet them and see how they behave, heck, almost every time you first talk to an NPC, triggers a mini scene where the whole party interacts with him/her!. Furthermore, if you are so inclined, there are loads upon loads of books that give you insight into the world of Arkose, its god, and just funny stories from the world. A lot of care and love was put into the game's lore, and it's easy to tell.

 And now the game falls apart. This is an RPG, so you will be travelling from town to town, but instead of going through an overworld, you go through a map. A map, as in a real map, a flat, hand-drawn map. It's better than a list, as most RPGs now a days use, but at the time it was fairly underwhelming. It does have a very neat twist in the form of landmarks, you may see drawn symbols, like a sun with a face, an upside-down crow or what have you, you can examine each of them for little pieces of lore surrounding the area, which is very cool. Towns are made out of pre-rendered backgrounds, the norm for the time, but they are very low-quality, and while most towns get it easy by showing places you can enter with yellow lights, some dungeons make it hard to see just where you can enter. Movement is also pretty dorky, characters love to bump into things, and walking through narrow places can be a bit of a pain sometimes. There's also a lockpicking minigame, there are like 5 places where you need it, luckily, and most of the time, there are Skeleton Keys that let you bypass it nearby. Why luckily? It's a Simon-says type minigame, the right pick is controlled with the four face buttons, and the left pick is controlled with the keypad, there are four levels to the minigame, and according to the level, is how many moves there are. Level 1 has you memorizing one move at a time, for a total of four, while level 4 has... four moves at a time, for a total of 16. WHAT?! If that wasn't obnoxious enough, some of the moves the pick does look very similar, particularly down and left on the DPad, it's very easy to make mistakes when trying to do a 16-move chain. Don't ever bother with anything above level 2, luckily, there are not many of these, I think there's not a single Level 3 lock for Stinger to pick, god bless.

 Then comes the Random Encounters, which you can avoid by holding R2+L2 when you hear the roar. Combat is needlessly confusing, as it's in real time, but what makes it confusing? There are four menus that you must toggle with the shoulder buttons, a Engage, Attack, Spell and Item menu. Melee characters, like Stinger and Harv-5 have it easy, as you should never need to touch the Item menu(Bar the last boss) and they don't have spells, so only two menus, yay. Engage Menu lets you either Engage the enemy, Evade enemy, Flee from battle or Pass the turn. How does it work? In order to attack the enemy, you must get close to them, hence the Engage the enemy, but why a Get Away from enemy? Once you engage an enemy, or get engaged by one, you are locked into fighting it unless there's another one in attack range, in which case you can attack both of them, but if you wish to attack another enemy, you must "Evade" the enemy, and then Engage it. Needlessly complicated. Attacking needs its own menus since you have Guarded, Normal and Aggressive. Just stick to normal attacks, as Aggressive moves love to miss. Actually, this game has the highest Miss chance I've ever experienced in an RPG, I was missing attacks left and right all the time. Lastly, there's Special, for melee characters, it means that they get projectile attacks that consume ammo, while ranged characters get a melee attack(Since they can't use their normal, ranged attacks when engaged, unless there are enemies far from them). Lastly, the game implements a "Twitch attack" system, pressing X before a melee attack hits deals double damage, and later on you gain elemental twitch attacks that has you pressing two buttons before a melee move connects, not a bad idea, but in a game this easy, it serves no purpose.

 Spells and Items is where it gets annoying. You can't get any spell or item description in-battle. So just hope that "Swarm" is an attack spell and not a Poison spell. Even worse, you have to go through a list in order to pick your spell of item, and you must go one by one, on 20-item plus lists. Clemett gets it worse, as he attacks with a cannon that has 20 different types of shots.... except that there are no description for them anywhere on the game. All his shots look the same, even if they behave differently, He-At was probably a fire attack, but what does the player make of "BNG-50"? With Clemett, just stick to the 25 mana shots. Oh, and remember how combat is in real time? Enemies will get free shots at you while you go through the lists! Except that it doesn't really matter. The level cap in the game is 15, and the game provides the best leveling spot... on the second town of the game. These four guys can be fought at any time, give money after each fight, and give out from 500 to 800 experience points(Depending on how many last hits the character got) per fight. I had maxed Stinger at 5 measly hours into the game. How does this tie into the game? The difficulty is a straight line, enemies take more or less the same amounts of damage, and deal the same amounts of damage, the whole time. New area? Enemies are just as weak as the ones in the area before. Sometimes even weaker. The game doesn't get any harder, but it might as well get easier as you go along. And the bosses are just pathetic, the last boss has two forms(One for each party), one that is fought thrice and the other one twice, but it's really, really easy. I just had to use a mana potion(First time I used an item in the game) on the mages, but that's about it.

 To top it all off, you get a limited inventory, and 80% of the stuff you get are useless items that heal 1-3 Hit points or "Nothing special". You can either have them hog inventory spots until you find that one shopkeeper that will take them for 30 gold instead of 1, or just drop them on the spot, I always chose the latter. The game does keep its sense of humor even with the items, there are items that "Taste great, but does nothing", and you can find "Pandora's Cauldron" that says "Don't use. EVER.". Save before using it, as it destroys the world in the game's longest FMV, and you have to reset the console.  Then there are two FPS minigames, and both of them are.... pretty decent actually, while they suffer slowdown when lot of stuff is going on at the same time, they are way more fun than they should. Oh, and the game is 2 Discs, but each disc contains a different overworld map... when the party splits and one goes to said other world, expect a lot of disc-switching, so you might as well stick with one party until you finish their quest, even though you can swap quests at Inns.

 Most bad games tend to have really good graphics, this is not the case. The game has aged very, very poorly, characters look as pixel vomits, so to speak. Some NPCs look like Final Fantasy VII potions, I kid you not. The animation is very choppy as well, and the FMVs don't fare any better. Hilariously enough, spells have very... picturesque descriptions, say "a spiritual snake appears and bites the enemy", but it's just a small yellow "hit" sfx over the enemy, every spell is like this, more or less. To be fair, the 6 Summon spells do have FMV sequences, but they are the exception. While the music won't be considered a classic any time soon, it's very, very good. There's also a lot of different songs used throughout the game.

 What does one make out of Shadow Madness? It is not a good game, that much is clear, but so much work was put into the setting of the game, I'd say it's worth a look if, and only if, you happen to enjoy JRPGs, especially the old ones.
 4.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Killzone - Liberation

 Liberate me from this game. Maybe.

 Started it last night before hitting the sack. Again. Long story, anyways I digress, the game: I don't like it. It's very, very slow, movement and shooting. And I know that putting a shooter on this kind of console is a bit hard, but I'm not completely cool with the controls. Even as I hold L, it feels as it sometimes I'd shoot at thin air? I think?  I dunno. Speaking of slow, I was willing to read the whole backstory, but the story panels took so long to go by, I just skipped them after the third one.