Here is a game whodon't need any presentation. Pokemon X/Y. The last time I played a pokemon game was when I was a teenager (14 years ago) with pokemon Red / blue. I don't remember if I finished it, but I know I played a lot with it. I cannot talk or compare about the difference of Pokemon X with the last couple of others Pokemon games (Pearl, Black and white, etc) but for someone who reenter the world of Pokemon, like me after 14 years, this is a blast!
I read some critic about the fact that not enough new Pokemon has been added to X and Y, but for people like me who didn't play the game for more than 10 years, all the pokemon are new, since you can get all the Pokemon from all the old games (700+). This is just perfect! So almost all the pokemon I see are new to me, and if it's one from the first generation, I get a moment of nolstagia. :)
One thing that you will notice also is the new 3D graphic. This is the first pokemon on handheld that they made in 3D (I'm not talking about the crappy 3D feature from the 3DS... I just hate 'augmented' 3D). The shading / texture are beautiful, from the characters to towns and environments. They remind me a lot of Golden Sun on DS. The animation of the Pokemon durin g the combat are varied and great. Even if I removed them later in the game, beacause I wanted the combats to be faster. :P
They also added a lots of online and Local multiplayer feature. You can trade, fight, give power up and do more with other players.You can see who is playing in your friend and also chat (by voice) witht them. It could have been nice to be able to send just a text message also, instead of going into all the pipeline to get a voie call. Anyway...
So all in all, Pokemon X / Y is a must take if you have played and liked the game 15 years ago and didn't replay since then. I've put so far around 35 hours in it and finished the first part (Until the credit). After that, other feature open to you and more can be done if you want to cacht em all!
Evoland is a small game I discovered on steam not too long ago. It is a game made by Indie developper Shiro Game and came out the 4 april 2013. I will not make a big review like the other game, but I still wanted to talk a little about it since I pretty much liked it, even if it took me only 5 hours to go through all the game and achievements.
Don't think that you will play a full game when you bought it, but see it more like a experience and history lesson. History Lesson? Yeah because you will see most of the evolution that the RPG as gone through since the Game Boy era. So the more you advance and get chest in the game, the more the game will evolve. From the 8 bit to 16 bit and even 3D. Also from Zelda style combat to turn base combat and many more things. Evoland has also a lot of cliché and reference from popular RPG game.
If you are a big old school RPGs lover, it's a game for you. I'm sure Evoland will remember you some good souvenir when you were playing in your younger days.
Albert Odyssey : Legend of Eldean is a Sega Saturn game developped by Sunsoft that was released in NA on July 1997. It was localized by Working Design, known for localizing other great game (especialy RPGs) in english on different console. There is two other Albert Odyssey that came out before on SNES. These were tactical RPGs instead of turn base like this one. AO is another game that I played when I was a teenager. I can't remember if I had finished the game, but I know that I have some good souvenir and I liked it in the past. It is not a RPG that has revolutionized or bring any new gameplay elements. You cannot be more classic than this game, but it's a game that you can do and enjoy pretty easely.
Story :
You play as Pike, a young boy found and raised by a group of harpies. With you, they found a magic talking sword called Cirrus that speak for you since Pike is one of these heros that does not speak in a RPG. So one day, the harpy village crystal is stolen and a friend of yours is petrified by the ennemy. Then your quest begin to find a priest who will be able to cure your friend. So over your adventure you will learn that an evil emperor try to take over the world and overtime you will find different allies that will help you to destroy him.
Nothing big here and pretty straight foward. It's not a great or bad story. It is enough so you can continue to play even if sometime, some mission or event that you have to do seem like they were not very necessery to the story. They just sometime happen and finish really fast and then you do : '' Meih!? That's all...? Ok, fine...'' All in all, some events could have gone a little deeper.
But the cool thing is that when you think you have finished the game a new adventure begin. (Yeah, I just spoiled you a little about the game, but I know you will not play it so it's fine ;) This new adventure begin with almost all your old crew. Again, you have to find and kill a bad person that you briefly saw in your last adventure.
Game Play :
The battle system is pretty simple. It's turn base, so each player and ennemies wait for their turn, determined by the agility. Then you has to choose if you want to attack, defend, use skill/magic, item or run...pretty simple huh? As for the magic and skill, they are unlocked after getting a certain level. Nothing complicated here either. Even if the combat are simple, for me there are one of the best type they can be. But I must admit that in Albert Odyssey, loading time kill me a little. When you enter a combat or when a ennemie die, you have to wait some seconds that seem to last forever.
Outside battle, you have all the basic of a RPG. Villages, a world map and dungeon to explore. This last one are pretty straigh foward and not long to do. One thing though that annoyed me in the game are the monster encounter rate. I hate that when just after a combat, you do two steps and then get another fight! Dammit! Let me walk a little for god sake! Graphic :
The graphics in this game are really nice. The town, dungeon or castle sprites are top notch. The characters sprites are also well made and detailed. In a battle, the combats animations are nice to watch and reaaly done well. They've done a great job on that game. Music : The music in this game is very nice. All was made with real instrument, it is not something that you were hearing a lot at the time. Even thought the music is good, I don't think it is something that you will listen often outside of the game. Overall :
Albert Odyssey is a nice game for those who want to play a good old style RPG but with better graphics and animations. It is a simple and no brainer game with a story who is very easy to follow.
This is until you reach the goddamn last dungeon! What the heck there were thinking on that!?! Earlier I was questionning myself if I have finished this game in the past. After passing some time in the last dungeon, I remembered rage quitting it in the past. It is such a maze with teleporter and all that shit were you can just turn around for hours. Even in the past people were calling in lot at Working Design to know what to do, so they made a Walktrhrought to help peoples to do it... and that's what I've done. meih... Awesome : - Simple turn base system - Awesome 2d graphic and animation - Nice humour Meih... : - Loading time in combat - High encounter rate - The last dungeon!
Baten Kaitos is JRPG that came out on Game Cube only and it was released in NA on November 2004. It has been co-developed by Monolyth Soft and Tri-Crescendo and published by Namco. This is a game that I wanted to play for a long time. I remember I bought this game to my younger brother for Christmas some years ago and for some reason, I didn't bought one for me. So the reason why years later I decided to buy and try it is... because I listened to the music. I like to browse video game music on the internet, and someday I heard a combat music that kicked my ass and I knew who made that music just by the style of it. Can you guest? Damn right! It is Motoi Sakuraba, again. (Did you know I can listen up to 8 hours of his music when I work at job). So by knowing it was him who has done the soundtrack, I bought the game.
Story :
This is a typical JRPG story where a Evil God seek to awake again after 1000 years and you try to stop it with you crew who are most different from one another. You have the weird one, the girl almost nude, the big guy, the one who just look like a girl, the young girl and the teenager hero... So nothing new in there and I was not much impress by it. I never really got linked with them and some even pissed me off sometime.
Game play :
This is where Baten Kaitos differs from other RPG. It is in his combat system. The battle system work with card, called magnus. Their is all kind of magnus, you have the one to attack, to defend, to heal, to boost and other that does almost nothing. So when the combat begin, you have limited time to use the cards from your deck. Each cards have number on them and the things is to try to do a straight (like on poker) to boost the attack damage. But you have to be careful not to use weapon that can be the same element has the enemy. (Fire sword against immune to fire, you see the thing?).
It is a cool idea in some part of it. You can get hundred of magnus card so there lots of possibility, but the thing I dislike about that is often, you have to recheck and update you deck. So when you have all the character, it can take up to 1 hour to do so. For me it's just time lost. Also the combat can be slow. When in the end you can play up to 9 cards, it's begin to be long watching the character doing is attack animation each time.
Graphic :
There are some pretty graphics in this game, especially for some backgrounds and environment. There is lots of different places to explore, from a candt village to a desert one. But, we cannot say the same for the characters design. I think they lack something in each of them. None of them have charisma and I didn't connect to any of them. Oh and if you look closely to the high rez image on the booklet, you can see how ugly Xelha can be.(No really, look at her head, it's look like a big plastic head. And I don't talk about their facial expression...). All in all, they made a good job even if I think there is a little to much type of environments.
Music and Sound :
It's god damn Motoi Sakuraba. Sure the music is good. It is mainly because of the combat theme that I wanted to do this game.
One thing, and it's the most horrible thing in the game, are the voice over. It's been a while that I heard such bad voice over in a game.
Overall :
It was a 'OK' game but a little to long, or it seemed to long. And I must admit it, I didn't fully finished it at this date. I'm at the last boss and I need to grind a little more to beat it, but I'm just to tired to play it anymore for now... (50 hours so far).
Shining the Holy Ark is a Sega Saturn game developed by Sonic Software Planning (now Camelot) that came up in NA in 1997. StHA is a First Person Dungeon Crawler RPG with turn base battle. Firts, I have to say that I really like Camelot games, especially there RPG. I'm sold to them. I remember renting and playing this game when I was a teenager and in my memories, this game was hard. But after completing it 15 years later, I must say that finally, it's not that hard, but you will have to grind to be able to progress.
Story :
There is not much to tell about the story. It is a typical story of Light fighting against the Darkness, where Vandals (Innovator turned bad) want the revival of the 1 000 years kingdom, an age of Darkness. The story is also like a prequel to the story of Shining Force 3, since it's happen 10 years earlier. You can even see Julian, of the the heroes from SF3, as a little kid talking about is father.
Game play :
The biggest fun of this game are the combats. They are simple and yet effective. As you travel into a dungeon, you will eventually came face to face against an enemy. When the enemy appears, you can send to them Pixies to do preemptive attack. Pixies are fairy like creature that you can find anywhere in the game by searching certain places (Total of 50). So when you succeed in you preemptive attack, the pixies will deal some damage to the monster and will also give you more money and XP at the end of the combat.
During a Battle, you can have up to four characters with you, on a total of eight. You can switch between characters however you want at the start of a turn. Like any traditional turn base, you choose the action for each characters and then the combat begin. Agility will determine when someone will hit. You can also set your partner to 'auto' so they can decide by themselves what to do.
One aspect I loved in the combat is that you see your partners attacks. Since the game is in first person, you don't see your character, but it's nice to see the other one when they attack. It's just bring a little more to the game, compared to the old Dragon Quest where you never see your character attacking (DQ 8 changed that and is just perfect by the way).
As for skill and magic, you acquired them by leveling up. Simple as that. Another thing that I found really nice, each of your character has a special attack triggered by luck. You can acquire them with levels or weapons. In the end, you can have like 5 or 6 special attacks per character. This is just crazy!!! Miam, love it!
The rest of the game is just exploration of different dungeons, and some can really be long! Rarely, to never, will you ever do a dungeon on the first try. Getting all the good item and weapon in dungeons will also help you a lot along the trip.
Graphic :
First thing, the cinematics are just awful, no...really. Even though it's from 1996 (in Japan) it's was not Camelot forte at this time. But the in game graphic are descent. Personally, I really appreciate them. The environment are all 3D and the character are 3D render. It's the same for the enemies. True that sometime it can seem awkward, but overall it does a good job.
Another thing that I like are the menu and UI icon. It was also used in the older Shining Force and even today I still think there are great. There are simple and we understand them quickly. You can notice Camelot have kept this method by playing the last Golden Sun on DS.
Music :
Music was made by Motoi Sakuraba, one of my favorite video games composer. So it is sure that I liked the OST of this game. The only thing I could say, it's it could have been great to get more music for the combat theme. I don't know why there isn't more theme for combat or boss since Camelot usually do that. You just have to think to Beyond the Beyond or Golden Sun, they can have up to 5 music theme just for the battle.
Overall :
It's a good damn game to try for every JRPG lover. Even after 15 years, this game has still some charm and personality. Even if the story is not kick ass, that there is no crafting (not really true, you can forge mithril into weapon...) and you cannot set your skill, this game will captivate you with its battle and its big dungeon. I must confess that I used walkthrought sometime to not lost to much time in some places.Tequila, Heineken, pas l'temps d'niaiser... In short, it took me around 30 hours to complete it, so it can go up to 40-50 hours if someone want to get everything.
Awesome :
- Combat System
- Diversified Special Attack / Weapon
- Promote you character
- Music
Meih... :
- Story Telling
- Slow down during battle
- Intro Cinematic
Here a little gameplay video from licktrophycute on Youtube :
This his Dubreu writing in his first blog post ever. Over the time, I will try to update this blog with small and brief reviews of all the video games I finish from now on. It is a way for me to remember the game I've done because too often, I forgot almost everything of them except the fact that I have finish it . Also, this blog is to help me improve my english skills. So, if in my future review or blog you see some mistakes, don't be shy to write them to me so I can improve myself!
So what's next?
I'm playing right now Shining the Holy Ark on the Sega Saturn. A excellent game from Camelot (Sonic Software Planning). If all goes as planned, I should finish it this weekend. A small review of the game should follow shortly after. :)
