Now Playing: Suikoden

 Man, this game feels ancient.

 So, I wanted Review #400 to be something Special, and what better game than Suikoden II to suit my needs? Suikoden II, often touted as one of the best JRPGs of all time, and a game that eluded me for so long due to its high asking price. But before we get to that, we've got to go through Suikoden I first!

 The game has a very SNES charm thanks to its primitive graphics and interface. The inventory is a collection of the inventories of every character in the party, which is rather odd, you can't compare your equipment with the one you are buying, menus are rather archaic as well, and the graphics make little use of the Playstation 1's increased color palette. It makes for an ancient-feeling game, but a very charming one for people that liked games from the SNES and PS1 eras.

 I've gotten up to the point where Ted reveals his True Rune... or rather, 'Rune of Truth' as they are called in this installment(Early Installment Weirdness!) and I'm having fun, it feels rather different from Suikoden III, IV or V and I can't pinpoint why exactly. Maybe the 2-D graphics make it feel more whimsical and fantasy-ish? Not sure, yet.

Review #398: Shadow Hearts - Covenant

 Another spin of the Judgement Ring.

 Shadow Hearts came out of left field and turned out to be a surprise cult hit on the PS2, so naturally, a sequel was bound to happen. It's... it's somewhat of an interesting beast, as it has a very different tone from the previous two games, while retaining some Shadow Hearts' most defining features: A quirky sense of humor alongside the Judgement Ring. Hilariously enough, it somewhat parallels Evil Dead's evolution. Evil Dead and Koudelka were both pure horror(Albeit Koudelka had a tiny smidgen of humor sparkled in), Evil Dead 2 and Shadow Hearts were horror with added humor... and both Evil Dead 3 and Shadow Hearts Covenant put a major focus on humor with a few horror elements sparkled throughout.

 The story picks up six months after the first game's bad ending. Yuri is still grieving the death of his beloved, but as World War I picks up, he makes it his job to defend Domremy from a german invasion. It quickly turns sour as his defeat marks the towns' destruction, and he gets infected with a curse that steals away his fusion powers and will kill him in time. An entirely new cast of characters will join Yuri on his quest, spanning Paris, Russia and Japan, trying to stop evil organizations, evil demons and maybe even Japan itself. The story is alright, but it's the cast that really makes it work, let's just say that one of the party members is a wrestling, vampire, gay super hero that turns into a golden bat every now and then. The cast is so interesting that I wish the game would've done more with them. Lucia, the assassin-turned-diviner gets barely any development, and Gepetto, the drunkard old puppeteer quickly falls to the wayside after the first disc. There was so much potential, and quite a bit of it was squandered. The story went full anime as well, which I didn't particularly enjoy mostly because they tried to ret-con the previous game's last boss into a 'He was a good guy all along but simply opted for evil means'. Seriously? It totally undermined him as a villain.

 The one thing that really disappointed me was the total tonal shift the game underwent. The first game had a very quirky sense of humor, and boy did they bank on that, and it worked wonders for the game... but they did away with almost every single horror element the game had going for it. As a result, a lot of the charm that Shadow Hearts 1 held for me... is gone. It somewhat feels like yet another fantasy JRPG, with only the fact that it's set in real life locations as well as a few real life people to set it apart from the rest. Another small gripe deals with dungeons, most of them are rather labyrinthine, particularly a few of the first ones, which can make them a bit dull to explore, but they get better as you go along.

 Covenant kept most elements from the previous games but enhanced them. The overall structure is the same: Explore Towns and Dungeons, fight turn-based battles and defeat bosses. Fights come out of random encounters, and beside your usual HP and MP gauge you also get the SP gauge, or sanity points. It will go down by one each turn, and if it drops to 0, your character will go berserk, luckily, the gauge refills after each battle and there are items to restore it during fights, and by the end of the game your characters' SP threshold will be so high that it will be of no consequence. The judgement ring makes its return as well, whenever you want to attack, be it magic or physical, or use items, you'll have to engage in a timing mini-game of sorts, having to press X on certain highlighted zones as a marker goes through the judgement ring in order to successfully carry out your action. It's not as tedious as it sounds, I promise.

 That'd be all fine and dandy, but the developers went the extra mile and polished everything to a sheen. This time around you can customize the Judgement Ring for every individual character. You can enlarge the highlighted areas as well as the hotspots, you can choose from different types of rings(Like Practice, which will keep spinning even if you mess up, but it will deal reduced damage), so if you are particularly good with a certain character, you might go for a high risk-high reward set-up. The combat is also much better, you can now see the turn order and set-up combos between two or more characters for bonus damage. Magic is now tied to equippable crests, so almost any character can use basically any spell. Yuri can beef up his fusions much easily since souls are no longer tied to elements, there're no more missable items, you can swap out party members on the fly, benched characters will still earn experience points... In case you don't get the picture, the game's combat is better in every single way possible, Shadow Heart 1 was already fun to play, Covenant is a dream.

 And while Shadow Hearts clocked at around 20 hours, this game is twice as long and features dozens upon dozens of sidequests. Every party member earns their unique special moves in different ways as well, Blanca must find and defeat all 16 Wolves, Joachim must fight his master and eventually get to the Man Festival, Lucia must find oils and Tarot Cards, etc. There's a lot to do if you are so inclined. While Towns are lacking the harrowing atmosphere from the previous game, NPCs are a lot more varied, so it's kinda fun to track them down, if just to read their silly names.

 As a game, Covenant is better in almost every single way than the first game. But, and it's a big but, losing the horror elements really took away some of its charm. And it's hard to explain, but while there's no doubt in my mind that this is a better game, my heart still gravitates slightly more towards the original game, that said, both games are fantastic, some of the best JRPGs on the system.
 9.0 out of 10

Month Overview: March 2017

 Tally:
Suikoden IV 6.5
Castlevania - Curse of Darkness 7.0
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.0
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 5.0
Suikoden V 9.5
Shadow Hearts 9.0


 Oh boy, oh boy, after last month's rather large tally o' games, this month's paltry selection of games makes for a stark contrast. While there wasn't anything particularly awful, March gave me two new GOTY contenders from two of the franchises I mean to finish this year. I find it funny how few JRPGs I had played on the PS2, considering it's one of my favorite genres, one of my favorite consoles and a console that is renowned for its JRPG selection.


Game of March 2017:

 Brilliant, Suikoden V was brilliant. Suikoden has had, at least III and IV, the games I had played before, a rather shallow cast of characters, but Suikoden V is made up of loveable characters, memorable scenes and a fantastic plot. The gameplay's the best it has ever been on the PS2 entries, and it's a pretty lengthy game as well. Easily one of PS2's finest.

Runner-up:

 I remember seeing this game on my gamestore of choice catalog's over and over again every time I went in to buy a new game, but the cover just never did it for me. And how disappointed I'm at my past self, because Shadow Hearts is one damn fine JRPG. I love the the horror elements mixed with the quirky sense of humor, I loved the combat system and, unexpectedly, I also loved the game's pace. How the game is divided in two very distinct chapters, how it's sort of  adventure through real-life places like China and London, but with a very fantastical flair. Highly original, highly entertaining, Shadow Hearts is another PS2 JRPG unsung marvel.

Now Playing: Shadow Hearts - Covenant

 The road to #400 continues

 When I first booted up the game I look at the intro cutscene and... GODDAMN, IT'S LOOKING SPIFFY. And then I started the game and... GODDAMN, THIS GAME IS BEAUTIFUL, YO. Not only that, combat feels better, and even though it seems to run at a lower framerate, it also seems to flow faster, and the smoother animations make the combat look glorious. That said... why did I bust my butt off getting the ultimate fusion and the good ending... if this game was gonna carry over from the bad one! Dammit, Sacnoth, why did you guys make the canonical endings the bad ones!?

 As if you couldn't tell from my gushing, I adore Covenant. I just got through the first boss and I love the game. I do. I wasn't feeling Yuri's new design, looking at the art and screenshots, but it has won me over, it looks quite neat. I'm also liking Karin, since she reminds me of Orochi Leona, and I love Leona from King of Fighters.

Review #397: Shadow Hearts

 In which I get to judge the judge.

 Shadow Hearts is bloody fantastic, review over, carry on. Picking up 15 years after the story of Koudelka, Shadow Hearts is more or less a direct sequel to the events that transpired, featuring an entirely new cast of characters, enemies and locales... with the appearance of a few familiar faces every now and then. The gameplay has been redone from the ground up, becoming a turn-based RPG, but with its own twist on the formula.

 You play as Yuri Hyuga, a Harmonixer(Don't get too attached, as it will get retconned to 'Harmonizer in future games), a being that can transform/fuse into different monsters. Being haunted by a talking voice, he is told to protect a mysterious girl, Alicia, with even more mysterious powers. The bad guys want her, so Yuri must protect her, and eventually the plot has you saving the world from otherwordly entities. You know, the usual. But as generic and cliched as the plot is, the characters are very interesting, so they manage to carry the story through. You want to learn more about them, Zhuzhen the mysterious monk with ties to Yuri's father, Keith, the bored vampire and his merry reactions to everything that happens, etc. It's a very endearing cast of characters. Bonus points for the art direction, it takes after Koudelka, so there're a lot of horror-inspired elements, with brilliant enemy design and haunting, creepy locales. Even the most mundane of towns manage to look grim yet inviting. It also has a... retro charm of sorts, having pre-rendered backgrounds and simple, yet serviceable character models, it ends up feeling like a beefed up playstation 1 game!

 The game is structured in two halves: Asia and Europe. Asia is very linear, you have little control of your next destination or how your party is made up of, with very little backtracking allowed, if any. Once you reach Europe you can't go back to any Asian part of the map, but you are free to backtrack at will or indulge in sidequests, although these open up at the very last stretch of the game. One of the game's biggest drawbacks is the huge amount of missable stuff. Some events, NPCs or items have a very small window of availability, so I would suggest investigating a bit before starting the game, lest you miss anything you might want. There's no world map, sadly, so you'll select towns or dungeons from a map, not a dealbreaker, but slightly disappointing. It's also a bit on the short side, you could probably finish it in under 20 hours, it took me about 25 since I went the completionist route and had to do every single thing the game had to offer.

 When not exploring, you'll be taking part of random encounters and their turn-based battles The game's main mechanic is the Judgement Ring. Want to attack? Judgement Ring. Want to cast a spell or use an item? Judgement Ring. Bargaining with a seller? Judgement Ring. Want to pick up a key item inside a dungeon? Judgement Ring, heck, even some story-related events require the Judgement Ring. This ring has sections highlighted in different colors, and you must press the X button when the marker passes through these. Depending on when you hit these highlighted sections, you'll score extra damage, extra hits or enhance the results of your spell or item... and failing to hit these sections will result in diminishing returns or even skipping your turn! It sounds tedious, but it really isn't. I had at least two different grinding sessions(Money is hard to come by! And the other time, I realized that enemies were giving egregious amounts of experience points... so why not?) and not once did I grow tired of it.

 The last two mechanics worth mentioning are Sanity Points and Malice. Malice is built up as you defeat enemies, and once it reaches a certain threshold you'll start being haunted by special bosses. These bosses are too tough when they first start haunting you, so you'll have to appease the Malice by entering the Graveyard, which is done from any save point, and defeating a simple, rewardless 1 on 1 battle with Yuri. This sounds more boring on paper, trust me. Unnecessary padding? Maybe, but it didn't bother me too much. As for Sanity Points, this is a third gauge, next to HP and MP, that decreases by 1 every turn. Each character has a different SP amount, which increases sometimes when leveling up, and can be restored by using items or by finishing a fight. If your SP falls to 0 the character enters a Berserk state, which means that you can no longer control it and that he or she won't receive experience points if you finish the fight. Frankly, it's yet another thing that sounds more annoying than it really is.

 I loved Shadow Hearts. I loved the gameplay, I loved setting, I loved the themes it touches, I loved the quirky sense of humor, I loved the entire cast of characters and I even loved its mundane and trite plot. It's not your average JRPG, it does its own thing and it loves it. I love it.
9.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Shadow Hearts

 And now, let's take a trip back into the world of Koudelka.

 Damn, is the game ugly. I mean, the CG cutscenes are sooo dated, they look fugly, heck, Yuri himself looks as if he belonged to a different game, since other character models aren't as fugly. But y'know what? I love it. I love early PS2 games, they have a certain charm that I just love, for whatever reason.

 That aside, I played but half an hour, and I kinda like it. Not the biggest fan of the judgement ring, since I can see that mechanics growing old if I was to grind for experience points or what have you, but, on the flip side, it also reminds me a little of Paper Mario and its timing-based combat, so that's a plus. Kinda.

 I'm also liking how weird the game is. Yuri's father appears out of thin air because why not, he's also wearing a fox mask, because why not. There're also evil, talking masks, because why not, and the main bad guy was using a tiny imp with a scythe as a weapon because why not. If the game can keep this weirdness up I'm gonna be in love. I love weird.

Review #396: Suikoden V

 The Sun comes out again...

 The Suikoden franchise kept straying further and further away from its roots until Suikoden V happened. Not only does it try its hardest to feel like the PS1 originals, it's also filled to the brim with winks and references to all four previous games in the franchise. And while that could end up turning this game into a shallow affair, it ends up being pretty darn great.

 Taking place in the Kingdom of Falena, you play as the mute hero, the Prince of Sol-Falena's Queendom. Early in the game, which means 10 hours or so into the game, our hero is subject to betrayal and exile, her sister and the Sun Run turned hostage/weapon and the entire Queendom a plaything for different political parties. It's up to the prince to gather a rebel army, save his sister and restore order to Falena. Suikoden V's story is bloody fantastic, it's smart, filled with tons of political intrigue, themes of war and some fantastic, poignant and emotional scenes peppered throughout the entire adventure. Not only does this game feature some of the best character designs in the franchise, it also features some of the most interesting, engaging and sympathetic characters in Suikoden. And there's a ton of them. One thing to be mindful of is the fact that the story is very slowly paced, heck, I was 2 hours into the game and I had seen two dungeons at most and had barely had any fights, but I think the pace works to its advantage, as it develops both the characters and the queendom of Falena very well.

 Most of the game will be spent going from town to dungeon to town to dungeon ad nauseam, it seems Konami took Suikoden IV's criticisms to heart, as towns are HUGE and filled with various NPCs or goodies to find. You can no longer turn the camera around, opting for fixed camera angles instead, which feels rather regressive, this was not a 'feature' from older games that needed to return! Still, dungeons are simple enough that the camera won't get in your way. Once you get into the dungeon expect to be assailed by random encounters, but the encounter rate is alright, so no biggie. I've heard complaints about lengthy loading times, but I felt they were par for the course.

 Combat is back to six-man parties, thank god, since there're so many cool characters that you'll want to bring as many as you can with you. As a matter of fact, there're four extra slots which can be outfitted with support characters, for passive abilities, or four extra battle characters which which you can switch during battle. Formations are a thing now, and you'll need to make the most out of these, as characters have different attack ranges and their accuracy will decrease unless properly placed on the grid. Battles are fought by turns and work just like any other Suikoden, or any other JRPG, for that matter, y'know, the usual 'attack, defend, spell, item' options are here and accounted for. Skills are back from Suikoden 3, but a bit more limited. You can only equip two of them at a time, and you won't handicap yourself if you forget about them, since the game is rather easy and skills don't make such a huge difference in battle.

 Strategic Battles are back, it is a Suikoden game after all, and they are better than ever. These take place in real time, think of it as a real time strategy game-lite, as you're basically limited to ordering which units you want to move and where. There're three basic unit types(And a few specializations), Archers, Infantry and Cavalry and each type is strong against one and weak against another, think rock-paper-scissors. There're also naval strategic battles, but they work exactly the same, only with ram ships instead of cavalry. These are pretty fun, and can get pretty exciting once you are shuffling both land and sea combat at the same time! Just remember to be careful, as characters may die permanently and thus lock you out of the best ending.

 Duels have been reworked again, once again a rock(attack) - paper(defend) - scissors(Special) affair in which you must guess what your opponent is gonna do based on the line of dialogue they spew, only that now they are timed. The limited time factor really does add to the excitement and urgency of these battles, and the animations have been polished a lot from Suikoden IV, so these duels, which I never really cared about, became somewhat of a treat. It helps that a lot of these fights felt personal thanks to how likeable, or hateable, characters were.

 Another one of Suikoden IV's issues was it short length, well, they really made up for that with Suikoden V, as it's pretty easy to sink over 50 hours. The story is pretty lengthy, and there's plenty of stuff to do besides gathering all 108 Stars of Destiny. Gathering these characters is a bit tougher this time around, as some can be missed permanently and some FAQs are lacking some of the finer details regarding how to recruit some of these. Luckily, if you search around the net you will find your answers, but keep that in mind. Also, as with previous games in the series, some characters join way too late for them to be any use, like Shoon, who is pretty cool, but by the time he joins there's only one dungeon left. You will also need to grind a bit, as you'll need to have 3 battle-ready parties to tackle the very last dungeon.

 Not only is Suikoden V the best Suikoden on PS2, it's also one of the finest JRPGs on the system. The story is phenomenal, the characters are fantastic, the combat system works great, the strategic battles are the best they've been yet, and they even managed to make me like duels. If this is fated to be the last ever numbered Suikoden game... then what a send-off it was.
 9.5 out of 10