Review #535: Grandia Xtreme

 Finally done with this sucker.

Never trust a game with 'Xtreme', or variations thereof, in its title.

 Alright, so you're Working Arts and Grandia II was well received... on the Dreamcast, since the PS2 port was horrible. You also notice that people praised the combat mode. Thus, they had a brilliant idea: To redeem the Grandia franchise on the PS2 by making an entire game built around the combat system. It was a bad idea, but at least the framerate issues that plagued Grandia II are gone.

 In this JRPG you play as Evan, this guy that has the ability to open up portals, who gets roped into helping the army into stopping the Elemental Disturbance. He is placed as the leader of a unit featuring men and elves, albeit named with in-game terminology since 'human' and 'elf' is too mundane, and gets bossed around into collecting all four elemental slabs and stopping the disturbance. The story is generic, filled to the brim with anime-cliches and bland characters... well, what little story there is. To add insult to injury, cutscenes are very slow-paced, so they turn from uninteresting to downright boring. All party members feature diverse, colorful designs but... their personality is as flat as a wall and ZERO character development, you barely get a feel of their personalities since they get so little time to showcase it. In short: It's bad.

 The combat system is the game's highlight, but it's not perfect.

 Whatever, the story was bound to suck and the developers didn't mind it since what they promised was a game based on the combat system that made the series so famous. And it's true, the combat is great, sans a few issues. It plays just like Grandia 2, in case you forgot, there's a round gauge at the bottom-right of the screen, about 3/4ths are blue and the remaining 1/4th is red. Icons for enemies and your own characters move through this gauge, and once they get to the red area you get your turn and can issue commands. Things like 'Attack' or 'Defend' take effect almost immediately, but spells and special moves have a bit of delay, which means that the character moves through the red part of the gauge at a reduced speed until it hits the blue part of the gauge again and finally executes the special command. The beauty of the game lies on the fact that you can cancel enemies' actions if you hit them with 'Critical attacks'(They are another type of attack you can choose, don't worry) or a few special moves that have the property of 'Cancel', however, only if you hit them while they are on the red part of the gauge..... and enemies can do the same thing to you.

 Characters are constantly on the move, since battles take place on large areas, which is something to be mindful of. Actually, they stay still while their icon is on the blue part of the gauge, but when executing an attack, and shortly thereafter, they will move around, which is something to keep in mind when using area-of-effect spells or super moves. Spells depend on which 'Mana Egg' you equip on your party members, each member has a different amount of Mana Egg slots and you can only equip this at the hub-town. You'll also need to fuse different eggs in order to create newer, more powerful mana eggs. Each mana egg has its own MP, so you can use equip both offensive and healing eggs and not worry about running out of healing magic by using offensive spells. Super Moves run on a SP gauge, which is earned by getting hit or hitting enemies, and you learn new ones by leveling up your older ones. Each character has about 7 unique super moves, and they're a great way to mow-down enemies and bosses, so don't stock on that SP. Lastly, also at town, each character can equip various passive skills found on dungeons. These can be anything from restoring some HP when blocking to dealing more damage to specific types of enemies

Bosses can take quite a while to defeat.

 The combat sounds great, and it kinda is, when it isn't being a total prick. Y'see, characters get tired if they run too far when chasing a target, and if it happens... they lost a turn. This rarely happens, unless you choose to attack a fast, mobile enemy, that during its turn manages to avoid you. Enemies can get tired of chasing you too. Regardless, normally, your character won't get tired. Unless... your character gets stuck running against another running character. This is not an uncommon occurrence, for whatever reason, your party members love getting stuck against each other and thus wasting each others' turn. It can also happen after one of your character finishes their attack, and runs to reposition himself, but proceed to act as a wall for another party member that meant to attack someone. Maybe you were trying to cancel an enemy's powerful spell, but now you'll waste a turn and get wrecked with magic. Fun. This is so common it ain't even funny. Another big issue is that you can't rotate the camera during combat, which can be annoying when trying to set-up area-of-effect attacks. The game highlights which enemies will get hit on the circular gauge, but that's not good enough at times.

 Well, enough of the combat, how is the game itself? A drag. There're two different towns in the game, one which is used to progress the story a couple of times and another one that acts as a hub: The only place where you can save your game, buy equipment, fuse egg, equip skills and proceed to a dungeon. The game flows as follows: 'Evann, get the earth slab' and then you go to the Earth dungeon and defeat the boss. 'Evann, get the fire slab', 'Evann, get the water slab', etc. After you get all four slabs you'd think that you're done... but you're not, a new, randomly generated 30-floor dungeon opens up, which houses 3 dungeons on floor 10, 20 and 30 respectively. If you go right away... you might notice that enemies have powered up a lot. That's because you should go back and replay all four dungeons, which has you solving the same dang puzzles you already did, but fighting souped up versions of enemies and the same bosses. But whatever, you finish these 7 dungeons and a new one pops up. And you might notice that enemies are stronger.... BECAUSE ALL SEVEN PREVIOUS DUNGEONS HAVE POWERED UP. AGAIN. And finishing the game unlocks a new 100-floor, randomly generated dungeon... and power-ups the previous dungeons. Again. Now, you don't 'need' to redo previous dungeons... but you're encouraged to, since even if you decide that you don't need the experience points, you will need the mana-eggs unless you want your magic to get outdated. It's a horrible, grindy game design that's anything but fun.

Try to bring Titto along every time, the Steal ability is too good.

 Dungeon design is uninspired, puzzles are easy to the point of being laughable. Although it's kinda annoying that you have to redo them when you replay the powered-up versions of the dungeons. While inside these dungeons you can find a few gateways that take you back to the Hub town, you can't save while inside a dungeon and inventory space is limited, so you might want to take a trip back in order to assess the new skills you found and maybe heal-up. I never died while playing the game, but it must blow to lose all your progress, so you might want to take the trip back to town.

 Grandia Xtreme is not a good game. It's the opposite of one. They overestimated how good their combat system was, so they thought it wouldn't hurt to coerce players into replaying the same dungeons a few times. It did. They also thought that they could do away with a plot, just contrast how atypical Ryudo was to how generic-walking-anime Evann is, if the entire game focused on fighting. They couldn't. As it stands, even while Grandia II is such a bad port... it's much easier to recommend over this misguided game.
 4.0 out of 10

Archile's Grab-bag: Marching March Edition

 More packages got bundled together, which means... ANOTHER ENTRY IN THE GRAB BAG SERIES! These are always fun since I get to talk about games before even trying them out!

 Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel: I played this game a little bit when I was younger, and I think I liked it. I think. The game got the reputation of being a bit of a grind, so I'm a bit wary about it.

 Kya - Dark Lineage: I knew very little about the game, but something about it just appealed to me. It seems like an interesting and overlooked game/

 Nightmare Creatures II: I was gonna wait until Halloween, but I said screw it and just popped it into my PS2. The graphics are amazing, it doesn't look like a Ps1 game. It also seems jankier than its predecessor, but I remain carefully optimistic, the first Nightmare Creatures had promise, so maybe...

 Prince of Persia - The Fallen King: Geeze, the predecessor to the passable Forgotten Sands on the DS? And it looks even more childish. Can't say I'm looking forwards to this one.

 Art of Fighting Anthology: I wasn't planning on getting this game since they are easily emulated and I've never been the biggest fan of Art of Fighting, but the completionist bug in me bit me and... here we are.

 Tenchu - Stealth Assassins: The only Tenchu game I've ever played was Tenchu III, which was pretty good, and also Shinobido 2, featured on this blog, which I liked a lot. I've been meaning to give the entire series a whirl, starting with numero 1.

 Fatal Fury Battle Archive Volume 1: Same deal as with the Art of Fighting Anthology.

 Fatal Fury Battle Archive Volume 2: This one hurts me. While I'm not too big on Fatal Fury, I've a soft spot for Real Bout 2 Fatal Fury, featured on this disc, and I've always love the one-game wonder Rick Strout, introduced in said game. That said, the only reason I never bothered with this disc was the fact that Garou - Mark of the Wolves, one of my favorite fighting games ever, was missing. Seems I'll be having to import that one if I want to own a copy.

Now Playing: Prince of Persia(2008)

 Looks like mad cash.

Onto the reboot it is!

 Seriously, Forgotten Sands was a good looking game, but its predecessor, this game, looks SO good, Ubisoft clearly dumped a lot of money on this project. Textures are clean, character models look beautiful, vistas are gorgeous and clothes flow so nicely... it's quite a looker.

 A lot of people gave this game flak for streamlining the death process, but that wasn't the only thing that was simplified... Combat is now a fun, but simple, one-on-one duel. Every time. Controls are much simpler, no longer do you need to use R2 to run on walls, the Prince is smart enough to do it on his own. It's simpler, but it doesn't hurt the game. I haven't had the need for Elika's life saving abilities yet, but it sounds like it suppresses a lot of waiting when you die and need to be sent back to the previous checkpoint, so I'm alright with it.

 All in all, Prince of Persia(2008) seems like it's gonna be a great ne.

Review #534: Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands(PS3)

 The forgotten Ubisoft IP.

Last time I get to see this cover. So long.

 Here we are, the final entry in the Sands of Time saga and the last Prince of Persia game released yet. Since Prince of Persia 2008 underperformed, sales-wise, it's back to the previous Prince, but since his story was already told... this game is set before Warrior Within.

 In this version of Forgotten Sands, the Prince visits his brother Malik, who is under siege. Shenanigans happens, and then an undead army, helmed by an evil fire Djinn, is unleashed. Only the Prince and his brother remain conscious, and aided by a Water Djinn, it's up to the Prince to stop this undead army, before his brother falls under the temptation of the new powers he acquired. Everything that you think will happen will happen, so the plot is very safe, predictable and a bit underwhelming... but it's acceptable on the whole. The Prince is rather charming and will muse to himself pretty frequently, since he has no-one accompanying him. Look, the fact that the Prince's tale was already told, and thus this game was sandwiched inside the trilogy should already tell you that you shouldn't be playing the game for its narrative.

Battles feature large amounts of enemies.

 Acrobatics and platforming work pretty much like they always had, wallrunning, wall jumping, vaulting and spinning on bars... it's all here. The only new move is the ability to wallrun upwards when landing on a wall from a jump. Buuut, as you play through the game you'll also earn new powers to use in acrobatics. L2 to freeze water in place, L1 to 'restore' broken debris into the environment and circle to fly onto a nearby enemy. The new abilities are pretty neat and make for some great platforming. That said, the last few obstacles in the game can be a bit nasty and you can confuse yourself with the shoulder buttons, since you also need to use R1 to rewind time, if you mess up, or R2 to wallrun. Needless to say, the last stages are slightly more of a hustle than fun.

 Combat has been overhauled, and now it's actually more fun than ever before. Square slashes, triangle kicks(In order to break guards) and circle dodges. Enemies are less annoying and no longer need particular moves in order to finally be put down, this time around the challenge comes in the form of the huge waves of enemies you'll face. Still, I enjoyed this approach, battles were rather fun and fast, while also being fairly simple and fair.

Get used to fighting large enemies.

 There's an experience gauge now, which is filled by defeating enemies or finding hidden sarcophagi, and every time you level up you get a skill point to spend on powerful elemental spells, used with the directional control pad, passive upgrades, like more health, more damage or more sand stocks, in order to use more spells or rewind time. It's a fun system that remains rewarding all the way to the end of the game.

 Sadly, the game's biggest detriment comes in the form of bugs. It's not unusual for the Prince to get stuck on thin air, thank god for the rewind ability! It happened more times than I would've liked, and the game even froze on me once. Controls can be weird, using levels can be a bit of a hassle until you understand that you turn them with UP and Down on the analog stick and not by pushing them in the direction you want to move it. Another issue was that sometimes when the camera move around automatically, the Prince wouldn't exactly react to the analogue stick just as you'd expect. It's a bit hard to explain without you experiencing it firsthand..

Rotating levers... the worst!

 The Forgotten Sands on the Playstation 3 is easily among the best games in the franchise yet. They finally got the combat right, platforming is as good as its always been and the Prince is as well written as it gets. It does have a few blemishes that keep it from being the classic that Sands of Time was, but this game is no slouch itself.
 8.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands(PS3)

 The final forgotten sands.

I've grown to despise this cover.

 Yes, I'm still playing Grandia Xtreme, it just so happens that the game is boring, so.... Forgotten Sands it is!

 I just played a bunch of it and I'm liking it a lot. It feels like it's missing the Prince's spark, like some of its charm is gone, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not liking Malik as a supporting character. Sword play is pretty good, I like the upgrade system and the platforming seems to be on par with what I'd expect out of the franchise... so, yeah, I'm enjoying the game.

Review #533: Disaster Report

 Call 911, this is a disaster!

Just let her go. She is gimping the Framerate!

 Disaster Report was a rarity at the time of its release, a survival game in which the only enemies were your thirst and the environment itself. Survival games are a dime a dozen this days, but Disaster Report still has a charm of its own.

 You play as Keith Helm, en route to Capital City, a newly built city that has the oddity of existing on a man-made Island. But life ain't fair, and the entire city comes crushing down, victim of numerous earthquakes. Now Keith must make his way to the rescue choppers, and join up with whoever is willing to lend a hand. The game has impossibly narmy voice acting, and eventually the story takes a turn for the ridiculous featuring conspiracies and what not. It's a weird game, so your mileage may vary on the story. While you play the entire game as Keith, I didn't feel like the story was as developed as it was in its sequel, Raw Danger!, nor did it offer as many possibilities and choices. That said, there're two slightly different routes depending on a choice you can make midway through the game, so there's some replayability factor in here.

Not as impressive as its sequel.

 The game is very simple, you must traverse the environment, collecting items and drinking water as not to die of thirst. It's not a survival game in the truest sense, water fountains are plentiful, and double as savespots, but while your thirst gauge drops pretty rapidly, you can take water bottles with you, which can be recharged, in order to restore your thirst. And if you die you'll be taken back to the nearest section, completely healed, so even carrying healing items becomes unnecessary. Keith has a very limited storage space on his backpack, and the game loves throwing at you items that you won't ever need or you won't be needing until much later in the game, and in which case they'll have a spare lying around nearby. Regardless, most of the game is pretty simple, and you just need to use certain item on a certain spot to proceed.

 ...which is not to say that Keith isn't in any danger. There'll be moments when you'll need to hold R1 to brace yourself for earthquakes, lest you take damage. There'll be action sequences in which you'll have to run away from fallen debris or even stealthily avoid gunmen. It's not the most exciting of games, but for the setting that it wants to convey... it's appropriate.

The thirst gauge isn't as bad as it seems, water is very plentiful in the game.

 The game is very rough around the edges, controls are particularly clunky and movement is very... stiff. What's really annoying is the camera, you can't rotate it and must settle with pressing L2 to place it behind Keith's back... which isn't allowed at times. It's quite disappointing, since more control would've helped immerse the player in this bleak, devastated city. That said, don't even let me get started on the framerate... it's bad, it's veeeeeeeeeeery bad. Most of the game will be played under 10FPS or maybe even less. It can make a few of the well placed slower-paced sections unbearable, since they are already slow to begin with, but the framerate makes them lose the impact they could've had.

 The best thing about Disaster Report is how it makes me appreciate its sequel so much more. Mind you, Disaster Report is a very decent game, a great concept but just a passable execution. Everything this game does, the sequel does even better. Except the framerate, that one's bad in both games.
 6.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Disaster Report

 Took some time, eh!

She reminds me of a certain celebrity...

 Finally I got my hands on the Raw Danger's prequel, Disaster Report and... it's quite janky, as expected. For starters, I'm finding the focus on Keith mre interesting than a rotating cast, and I think i dig the Earthquake scenario a bit more than the flood.

 All in all, I've not much to say. The game is very similar to its sequel, which is both a good and a bad thing, since that makes it very quirky and unique... but also very dated and rough around its edges. Only time will tell if the story and setpieces make it better.