My favorite GameBoy Advance games

 Here's the gist of it, in this world there's only one constant I'm entirely subjected to: Change. I am a person, and right now I'm not the same man that I was when I first began writing, heck, that guy wasn't even the same guy that wanted to write this in the first place! What I want to get to, once I stop digressing, is that this list is how I feel right now, at this very moment, so when and if I feel like making this list again, and knowing myself I probably will, it might change.

 So, what is that list? These are the games I liked the most on each particular system, this time around the Gameboy Advance. These are not necessarily the games I consider best, but the ones I liked the most and the ones I have the fondest memories of. For these lists I tried to stay away from multiplataform games, or from ports. I tried to, but in a few cases it was impossible to.


10) Guilty Gear X Advance

 Ever since I got this game a couple of Christmases(It actually is a word!) ago, I played this game over and over again. When the GBA was my platform of choice for getaways, this is the game I took. And y'know what, it looks pretty bad for a GBA game, it even sounds like a Gameboy color game, and even then, even then, I had a blast with this game. I could play on of my then-favorite fighting games on the go. It even had a phenomenal color-edit mode, a mode in which I spent more than I would like to admit.

9) Double Dragon Advance

 This is a game that became a bit of an acquired taste for me. I thought it was alright when I first played it, but nothing special. Fast forward a few months, maybe even years later, during highschool, I tended to get a very upset stomach, my alimentary habits probably weren't the best. Regardless, I spent quite a few days at home, while suffering from an upset stomach and nausea and... playing Double Dragon Advance. While at the outset it feels clunky, slow and maybe even limited, you'll soon discover that the moveset is deceptively large, and there's a ton of ways to dispatch enemies. Also, major bonus points for the art direction, emulating Hokuto no Ken very well. It might not be the best beat'em on the system, but hey, I learned to love it.

8) Dragonball Z Supersonic Warriors

 People usually hark on and on about how sequels are usually worse than the first installments, but my experience has told me otherwise, at least as far as gaming goes. Videogame Sequels are usually better than their first parts. Usually, Supersonic Warriors 1 is way better than its sequel, featuring faster combat and a combo system that actually works. This is another game I spent a lot of time playing while in highschool, except that I played it after coming home, next to the window and trying to get the most out of the setting sun's last rays of light. Hey, when you had a vanilla GBA you had to learn how to make the most out of different light sources!

7) Golden Sun/Golden Sun - The Lost Age

 This franchise I actually discovered through Emulation. I tried out the first game, loved it, but never finished it, since I wanted to buy it, except that I never came around it. Years later I bought The Lost Age and loved it, and a few years later I got my hands on the first entry! While the fanbase overrates these game a whole lot, an opinion backed by how much hate the sequel got due to, basically, complaining about things that these games never got right, and yet downright ignoring them when it came to these two), I still find them to be very entertaining. They are very original JRPGs, with the equippable Djinni serving as power ups, skills and providing class changes according to your setup. Not that it really matters when you can just wreck anything and everything that comes your way with the very impressive summoning spells.

6) The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King

 Who thought that making a Diablo-like dungeon crawling RPG based on LOTR was a good idea? No, seriously. Probably the same guy that thought about doing the same thing with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Well, that guy deserves a medal. It's no even funny how many hours I spent building my characters, redoing the bonus dungeons over and over again in order to get better and better equipment. And I created a ton of different characters, it's a shame that there's not enough slots to have one of each!

5) Pokemon Ruby

 While this is far from my favorite Pokemon game, as a matter of fact it's my least, this is the one I played the most. First I played it on an emulator. Then I played it on the GBA. Then I sent all my monsters to Pokemon Platinum. And then I played it again to send them to Heart Gold. And then I played it again because I couldn't leave my boxes without Pokemon. And while it is the Pokemon game I like the least at this time, at the time I considered it the best Pokemon game ever. It looked better than anything that had come before it, it had new mechanics, like the hideout which I adored, and while even at the time I could see how terrible some of the new Pokemon were, it had Blaziken, which is one of the best Pokemon ever made, both due to its type and looks!

4) WarioWare Inc. Mega Microgame$

 While I love this game, I hate what it did to Wario's character, making things like farting part of his persona. But even then, just as Guilty Gear X and Lord of the Rings Return of the King, this was one of my mainstay games when going away from home on holidays or long trips. One thing I like are arcadey games, score based, easy to pick and play, and this delivers. And I also like randomness, which is why my music playlists are always on Shuffle, and this game offers random microsized games and a breakneck speed. I love it.

3) Tales of Phantasia

 Ever since my younger self came upon the fantranslated SNES rom of Tales of Phantasia, I became enamored with the franchise. Yes, the official translation is a bit of a trainwreck(KANGAROO!) but the fantranslation wasn't all that accurate either, people just remember it fondly due to how... 'edgy' it was. The fact is, I clocked over 60 hours on this little beast, and even long after finishing the game, I returned to it to do some random battles while playing as other characters, like newcomer Suzu. I loved the amount of detail and optional scenes you could trigger in this game, little things like seeing Chester training at night to catch up to his friends. This might not be the optimal way to experience the game, but until Namco decides to translate the PS1 remake, or remake it on newer platforms, this'll have to do.

2) Super Mario Advance 3 - Yoshi's Island

 Alright, so I said that I'd try not to include ports, and I tried, I really did, but there's two reasons this game made it in: firstly, I never had an SNES, so the first time I played this game was right here, with this port. And secondly, it's an amazing game. A game I fondly remember playing early in the morning before going to highschool, while waiting for the rest of my family to get ready to go. It's a game that could get hard as nails as you got into the secret, bonus levels, but felt oh so rewarding when you finally cleared them. I usually hate having to replay levels, but amassing high scores became rewarding when I could unlock punishing secret levels. And then clearing those was a whole 'nother story...

1) Castlevania - Double Pack

 What's better than one Castleroid/Metroidvania game? Two of them, for the price of one. I think it's no secret that I absolutely love the genre, and you get two of them, TWO, on a single cart. Harmony of Dissonance is pretty alright, heck, if you play it first you might actually think that it's really good, specially considering that it's on a handheld console! And then you play Aria of Sorrow and HOLY SMOKES, THIS IS SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT LEVEL OF GREATNESS. Sure, the graphics are not as good, some would argue that even HoD has better graphics, and maybe the castle is smaller.... and while on the outset there's less weapons, there's actually more unique weapons, which is complemented with the fantastic Soul System, which has enemies dropping souls that you can equip. And you can have different soul set ups. There's so much customization and different ways to deal with enemies! Aria of Sorrow is so good I actually 100%ed it multiple times, down to the enemy drops. Something which I also did on Harmony of Dissonance, what can I say, I love the genre, and Aria of Sorrow is a particularly outstanding example of a Metroidvania.

Now Playing: Metal Gear Rising - Revengeance

 Not completely sold on it yet.

 Did you know? At one point in time, Metal Gear Solid 2 was my favorite game of all time. Having played Metal Gear Solid 1 beforehand, I immediately fell in love with the new protagonist, Raiden. There was a particular part of the game that I adored, the moment you get the sword, I actually got a separate file at the start of that segment so that I could replay the bit with the sword over and over again. For whatever reason, I abandoned the franchise at that point, and would later find out that Raiden was actually disliked in no small part due to the bait and switch. Because games have to be kept from evolving right? Always follow the same formula, because screw surprises and go with what is safe, right? But I digress, which is something I tend to do a lot.

 The game starts with a bunch of cyborgs, cyborgs everywhere and... and this is certainly not the Metal Gear Solid that I used to know. For whatever reason Raiden is wearing yellow butt armor on each butt cheek. And the characters' faces look really weird. And Jack now speaks trying to sound ruff, which threw me off a bit since it felt forced. And there's no sidestepping. And there seems to be no tangible rewards for exploration, besides a few subweapons.

 But then you have the very smooth combat. And my problem with the lack of sidestepping was only at the start, until I remember that I had a parry. As a matter of fact, the first sub-boss, the dogbot, was wrecking me. I was hating the game, I was about to die at times. My mashing was getting me nowhere fast, and I hated the fact that there was no sidestepping, like, seriously, who makes an action hack and slash game without any dodge of any kind? And then it hit me, there was a parry right? And then I started parrying, and the game made sense and it got a helluva lot easier. I went from absolutely hating the game to actually having fun with it, I think the tutorial should've stressed a bit harder just how important parrying is, because the game is built around it. Enemies will telegraph their attacks, and you have to react according to the direction the attack is coming from.

 The soundtrack is absolutely amazing, particularly when the battles get heated and the lyrics begin. The game is also filled with cool and badass moments in equal measure. And y'know what? Cutting stuff is fun, you can cut a ton of different structures, like metal stairs, trees or fences. It's fun.

 Overall, I'm having mixed feelings with the game. The combat is fast and smooth, and while I can get behind the reliance on parrying over dodging, it's still not my cup of tea(which is hilarious considering how much I love parrying in fighting games). Also, the targeting system isn't optimal, I'm having a hard time pulling moves like the Thunder Fist, while I had no trouble performing moves in the different Devil May Cry games.

Review #316: Senran Kagura - Estival VS

 It's actually better this time around.

 So, I'm not the biggest fan of Fanservice, as a matter of fact, I downright despise it, but, y'know, duty calls sometimes. This time it did twice. I played Shinovi Vs last year, and it was alright. But, y'know, it's my sworn duty to see if the sequel is any better. And it kinda is.

 The four groups of girls get transported into a beach of sorts, there's five new girls(Two of them are a bit older though), and they have to fight because of the Bon Dance thing, and the road to Kagura and nobody gives a damn about the plot. To be fair, it's slightly better this time around, I remember skipping the story due to how stupid it was in Shinovi VS, but I actually read it this time around. It was stupid, and while it did earn a few honest laughs, most of the time I was laughing at how dumb it was. In conclusion, it doesn't mean much, but the story is a tiny bit better than the previous time around. It's still just silly excuses to have the girls have each other, but still. The story is told a bit differently this time, instead of each group having their own story, there's a single 59-mission story thread that has you playing as the different girls. And each of the 27 girls get their own 5-missions sub stories, for almost 200 missions in all. You could easily clock over 20 hours on this game.

 The best way to describe the game is as a mini-Dynasty Warriors clone gone full Japan. You've got weak square attacks that can be chained into Triangle attacks, there's also energy-gauge-consuming, wide-area clearing super attacks and a relatively high amount of weak enemy to fodder to plow through. There's a bit more nuance to the game, the girls have three different modes: The one they start with, Yang, which has them remove their clothes for increased attack power and Yin, which has them switching clothes and getting various buffs. Each of the three forms also have their own different attack strings or attacks with different properties, although once you switch forms you can't go back until you play another mission. There's also air-raids, following a pop-up attack with a dash to follow the enemy up into the air. New to this game are allied CPUs, with which you can actually use 'fusion air raids' for added damage. You will also come across bombs, which I felt were a bit unwieldy, and even rideable mechs. And while the combat system is still a bit shallow, everything feels slightly tighter. Specials now come out immediately instead of separate cut-in scenes, which makes combat faster. Attack strings have been changed for almost, if not all, returning characters, some more than others. I remember feeling like Haruka was a chore to play as, but now she has entirely new, better combos, and Homura comboes her attacks much better as well, having a much less erratic slashing area in Yin mode, so while it's not completely different, it definitely feels tighter, more polished all around. That said, the framerate, on the Vita version, is not the smoothest. It's not unplayable by any means, but it can get a bit choppy.

 That said, the game recycles a few stages from the previous game, and while there's quite a few new ones, it's not long before stages start repeating. Sure, enemies might vary, and even the route you have to take, but it's the same 12 or so stages, spread throughout over 150 missions. That said, stages now feature more enemies than the previous game, which is something I liked, specially seeing how the combat feels much better. However, bosses are a chore to fight. Not only do they have super-armor, meaning that staggering them is hard, they can just interrupt your combos with their supers. And sometimes it feels as if they get infinite supers, and they spam them over and over again. It's not even hard to avoid, just boring. Hit, hit, dodge, wait until they execute their super, get in again, hit, hit, dodge, wait, close in again, etc. It can get very, very annoying. Another thing I wasn't particularly fond of is that the individual storylines must be unlocked by destroying the 80 'festive platforms'. They aren't hard to find at all, and the game tells you how many of them are per stage, but they just felt like needless busywork to pad out the game.

 If you like Fanservice, oh boy, you are gonna have a field trip with Estival VS. For starters, the game looks much, much crisper now. Not only that, the common enemies' clothes can be shredded as well, and breaking the bosses' clothes is much easier, and the graphical effect of the torn clothes looks much better as well. Each stage also packs a few 'Creative finishers', defeating an enemy close to certain objects will trigger them, and they are... they are Japan at their purest. For instance, defeating a boss near a volleyball net will send the girl flying, naked, through the net and getting tangled on it. Or defeating a girl near a jar on the beach will make an octopus come out and fondle her. I am not making this up. The customization has been expanded, you can customize a girl look's before and after transformation, down to them having different hairstyles or underwear on each form. There's a ton of new clothes, with 5 color variations each, new lingerie, new hairstyles, new accessories and even more accessory slots. And if you are into that, you can kiss the girls as well. Weirdo.

 Also worth mentioning is the relatively high amount of DLC. There's about 3 DLC characters, even more if you own the Japanese Version(Due to licensing issues they didn't make it westward). I don't particularly care about the DLC characters, but putting them, grayed out, on the character select screen is just tacky. And mind you, I think the 25 characters(27 with the free patch) roster is perfectly fine, with characters having entirely different movesets and what not, but having all the DLC characters on display on the character select screen feels as if they are trying to pry the money out of your wallet, which is something I just can't ignore.

 Senran Kagura Estival Vs has more characters, more stages, more customization, better combat and more content than Shinovi Vs. So much so, that I'd say this game make Shinovi VS obsolete. And y'know what, the focus is clearly on Fanservice, so if you are into that, the game delivers. But even then, the game is relatively decent as a mindless beat'em up.
 6.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Senran Kagura - Estival VS

Here we go again....

 Let it be known that I bought this game purely for research purposes, again. I mean, first time around I bought it because I had to see if they were as bad as I claimed due to my prejudice. Now because I have to see if the sequel improves upon the game. The life of a blogger is a hard one.

 And guess what? This time around I'm not skipping the story!.... yet. I'm gonna give it another chance, if it gets too dumb I will start skipping it again. And so far it's a bit dumb, I found myself laughing because of how dumb it all was, although the game did earn some honest laughs from me.

 Now, gameplay, I just did all five introductory chapters, and it's a bit better and a bit worse. Super attacks now occur in real time as opposed to cut-ins, which keeps the action running and feels much better. Aerial raves seem to be easier to pull off as well. All that said, the game runs a bit poorly on the Vita, I'm pretty sure Shinovi VS had a better framerate. It's not unplayable by any means, but it leaves something to be desired. On the other hand, graphics look slightly more detailed and crisper, and the 'cannon fodder' enemies' clothes break as well. Speaking of torn clothes, the 'torn' effect looks much better now.

 So, Estival VS looks like an average sequel. Some improvements here and there, a few hiccups, etc etc, still, I've barely played 5 stages so far, so maybe there's some mechanics still left to be introduced, and at least one of the new girls is a blast to play. Speaking of the girls, they have unashamedly placed all purchasable DLC characters on the character select screen, which is just tacky.

Month Overview: March 2016

 Tally:
Super Mario Land 2 - 6 Golden Coins(Virtual Console)          6.0
Devil May Cry HD Collection                                                  9.0
Devil May Cry 4                                                                       8.5
DmC - Devil May Cry                                                              8.0
Dishonored - Game of the Year Edition                                   9.0
Bioshock Infinite - The Complete Edition                               8.0
Fist of the North Star - Ken's Rage 2                                        2.5
Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme Vs Force                                  4.5
Under the Skin                                                                          5.5
Ar Tonelico Qoga - Knell of Ar Ciel                                        3.0
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale                                          8.0
Digimon Story - Cyber Sleuth                                                   8.5


 Despite a few blunders and a few disappointments, it was an overall strong month. I finally went over the entire Devil May Cry series, finished my adventures on Bioshock and came upon Digimon Story - Cyber Sleuth, which was a fantastic RPG... when you weren't grinding like a degenerate.


 Game of March:

 Devil May Cry 1 is fairly dated, but it's still rather good. Devil May Cry 2 is not as good as DMC 1, but not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. And then there's Devil May Cry 3 which is one of the best action games I've ever played. Combat is fast and furious, the story... the story is dumb, but cool dumb, so even if what's going on is dumb, it looks cool.

Runner-up:

 I really wasn't expecting to like a Stealth game so much, but lo and behold, Dishonored held me by wrists and never let go. The amount of ways in which you can tackle each mission, and the variety on how you clear them is staggering. Then there's the freedom you get when developing and equpping your skills, making it easy to tailor Corvo to your playstyle.

Review #315: Digimon Story - Cyber Sleuth

 Looks like the finally got a winning formula for Digimon.

 Digimon is a franchise that has had a bit of an identity crisis, not unlike Sonic, reinventing itself with each iteration. Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth is the latest RPG of the franchise, and I think Namco finally got itself a winning formula.

 Cyber Sleuth takes place in Modern Day Japan, with a twist, digital interaction has advanced so much that you can kinda project your consciousness into an avatar. Playing as a somewhat mute hero, that can be a boy or a girl, you meet up with your friends in the digital world, where you get attacked by an Eater. Now your body lays comatose, but your conscience managed to arrive into the real world as data-only. Fixing yourself a temporary body and employed by the detective Kyoko, it's up to the hero to solve the mystery behind the Eaters and the apparition of Digimon. It's a rather fun story, with some very Shin Megami Tensei-ish touches, like a S&M inspired boss, and the story can get rather dark, with suicide and even implied organ trafficking. The supporting cast is pretty engaging as well, albeit rather plain; there's Nokia, the girl that keeps talking about her 'hot bod' but is considered, in-universe, as not all that pretty, and Arata, the loner that actually cares about his friends, and the shy girl with a quirk to her personality. But that's alright, even though the supporting cast is a bit plain, the story is very engaging. That said, the localization leaves a lot to be desired. The most notorious problem is that the heroes sometimes refer to the Eaters as 'Bakemonos', or monsters in English, but the translators thought they meant 'Bakemon' as in the Digimon 'Bakemon', so now they refer to Eaters as 'Bakemons', which is such a dumb, hilarious oversight. There's also a few non-issue issues, where 'multiple dialogue choices' are made up of a single line of text divided onto two or three lines. These mistakes are rather surprising, since the text is very colorful, they clearly had fun writing the text for the game.

 The game is divided into 20 chapters, and on each you have to solve a few cases. While there's about 2-3 mandatory cases per chapter, you are free to tackle side-cases as well, with randomly generated green quests that.... are rather dull and repetitive. Yellow and Blue cases are much more fun and won't advance the story, while red cases are required in order to advance. The hero's unique physiology allows him to 'connect' onto the Digital World, and travel through digital roads, which serves him just right as his quests usually involve Digimon. You've also got access to a few skills, which change depending on your party set-up, that are needed in order to solve puzzles. 'Decipher' allows you to read data that contains clues to the puzzles, 'Copy and Paste' is used to copy colors and paste them on special platforms, 'Wall Break' is used to break walls(D'oh!) and there's a few others like increasing the amount of random encounters or forcing one.

 Not only does it employ random encounters, but fights used the tried and true turn based system. While you active party is comprised of three Digimon, you can carry up to eight reserve Digimon, and you can change any number of them on just one turn. You can also use your turns to use items, attack, defend or use mana-consuming spells. Party composition plays a big part to how battles play out, there's a rock-paper-scissors system around Digimon types(Vaccine, Virus and Data) that halves or doubles damage taken and received, as well as a fourth, neutral type. But there's also a secondary elemental affinity(Like Fire, Water, Light, etc) that could make the difference between dealing/receiving 0.5 or 0.75 times the damage against a Digimon with an advantageous type, or between 2 or 3 times against a weak type. Fighting the same Digimon many times will 'capture' their data, allowing you to 'load' them on the Digi Lab, and add them to your party. Digimon also come in different ranks(Baby, In-Training, Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, Mega, Armored and Ultra) and each one has a different weight. Weight comes into play due to the memory limit, which means that if your memory limit is 10, you can't bring a Mega(18) Digimon with you. While I understand that it was probably done for balancing issues, so that you don't curb stomp the competition too early, I thought it was a bit limiting. And, luckily, once you get further into the game, memory upgrades are easier to come by.

 But Memory Capacity is alright, ABI is what really takes the cake when it comes to annoyance. ABI is a stat that only increases when digivolving or devolving your 'mons. Why would you want to devolve a Digimon? Besides the required ABI, you can take your Digimon through another evolution line and thus earn more skills! That should've been a rewards in itself, but nope, they had to make it annoying. Y'see, you won't be able to reach most Megas on your first time evolving your 'mon, so you will have to devolve it once or twice. And then get them back to Ultimate, which means relevelling them back to level 30... it's a huge, annoying time sink. ABI is the one thing I truly, decidedly disliked about the game. And to add insult to injury, sometimes your 'mon won't reach the minimum stat requirements for a Mega Evolution, which means sending your 'mon to train on the DigiFarm, which can take from 30 to 60 minutes of real time, and it might need multiple sessions. Does that sound like fun to you? Honestly I can't see what they were thinking when they came up with this whole system. Oh, and lest I forget, the stat upgrades you get through the Digi-farm? They are limited by the amount of ABI your Digimon has, so maybe you'll need to devolve even further in order to then spend time to level it up, and then spend time on the Digifarm. The truth of the matter is: getting your party up to the point where you want them to be can get a while, a long, long while. These were the only moments I didn't like about the game.

 While the game is a bit flawed, this is easily some of the most fun I've had with a VITA game(Although, sadly(?), this is not an exclusive). Heck, this is easily my favorite Digimon game I've played(Which, frankly, is not a lot, but still). For people missing the good old days of Japanese RPGs, like I was a few days ago when enduring Ar Tonelico 3, this is a fantastic oldschool JRPG that gets almost everything right.

 8.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Digimon Story - Cyber Sleuth

 They almost got it right! Almost!

 While Pokemon has kept the same formula since it's creation, Digimon has always struggled for an identity, reinventing itself with each game. Heck, while the Pokemon anime has been kept stagnant since, like, forever, recycling the same formula over and over again, Digimon has had clearly defined seasons, with its own concepts, heroes and stories.

 And now we get to Cyber Sleuth, and I'd say Namco finally got it right. Kinda. Y'see, the battle system is fantastic, it flows fast, but has depth and it's actually fun to play. I also love having my 'mons running behind me, it helps that I've always loved Digimon's designs far more than Pokemon's. The game's story is surprisingly dark, with a few rather mature themes mixed with the more lighthearted otaku-culture centered set-up. The supporting cast is a bit bidimensional, but I can forgive that.

 But where the game falters is with how raising Digimons work. Firstly, the memory capacity is a total downer, since Digimon have different 'sizes' and you can't go over the memory capacity, and each digievolution makes them heavier. It sucks. It's specially annoying when 'Hacker Skills', which are needed to progress through dungeons are tied to how many Digimon and of which type you are carrying. To add insult to injury, there's an 'ABI' stat that rises every time you digivolve or devolve your 'mon. Chances are you won't be able to reach Mega on your first time through, so you'll have to devolve your mons, which translates into a ton of grinding. I just spent about 5 hours grinding, and even after meeting the ABI requirements, some of my stats didn't, which meant I had to train my 'mons on the Digifarm, and training requires at least half an hour of real time. It's really annoying. Specially because De-volving should be a reward in itself, since you can go through alternate evolution paths and get different skills this way. It works really well, but the ABI requirements are just ridiculous. FIVE HOURS GRINDING. FIVE.

 I actually got jealous of an NPC, while I had to devolve my Metalgreymon. TWICE(Which meant getting Greymon to level 30 three times total, which isn't fun) in order to meet the ABI requirement, and NPC gets an Agumon turned into a Wargreymon. For free. FOR FREE. Like, seriously? I've to grind my butt off and she just gets him for free? SERIOUSLY?

 What I liked:
- The story. It's relatively interesting, with surprisingly mature themes thrown into the mix.
- The combat. It's fast and fun.
- The Digimons. They look badass and you can have them running behind you.
- The presentation. The game looks beautiful, both character models and environments.

 What I didn't like:
- The ABI stat. It translates into grinding, and that's its only purpose.
- The translation. They... they goofed a lot. For instance, there's a Digimon called Bakemon, and Bakemono means monster in Japanese. Well, when talking about the Eaters, a special kind of enemy, sometimes characters refer to them as 'Bakemono' or 'Monsters'... the translators didn't get the memo, and call them Bakemon. They.... they really screwed up. I also came around about three different instances of having to pick an option from between two or three... except that it's only ONCE sentence that takes up two to three lines on the text box. Seriously? And it's a bit surprising, since you can tell that they had fun writing the dialogue.
- The DLC. Getting the Asia version means that I couldn't get the BlackAgumon and BlackGabumon DLCs, but even worse, there's paid DLC Digimon. Just imagine if Pokemon started selling their mons? At least they've patched some free Digimons, but still....

 What can I say, after playing the horrible Ar Tonelico 3 I kinda lost all hope on modern JRPGs, but Cyber Sleuth is really good. Like, REALLY good. Sure, some of the character designs are a bit pandering, but they don't go overboard with gratuitous camera angles or anything of the sort.