Square Enix have reconsidered JRPGs as a genre for the west, it seems. A few websites have been running this story after Bravely Default's success worldwide was a bit unexpected. Seriously...Square Enix have got to realise it is a genre that there is a serious fan base for.
http://www.siliconera.com/2014/03/31/bravely-defaults-success-west-making-square-enix-rethink-jrpgs/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-31-surprise-bravely-default-success-sparks-square-enix-rethink
http://kotaku.com/square-enix-has-finally-realized-that-people-like-jrpgs-1555236872
Some different websites with different perspectives on that story. After finishing the game, I'm really looking forward to the announcement when we will get the sequel localised. It has to happen after all this, right?
I've been sort of half collecting some cheap DS games over the last while. Its such a solid system and I'm wanting to grab all the games I'm interested in before the 3DS kind of takes over in shops and online. That won't be for a while I think, but it has been a gradual change, with shops where I am slowly downsizing their ds selections, even preowned stuff. Most recently today I ordered the last DS Professor Layton that I was after, Spectre's Call.
Some other ones I'm wanting to get are;
Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
The Dark Spire - HNNNGGG its not even funny how long I've been trying to get this one for
999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors - Heard so many good things about this one
Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
Phoenix Wright - Any from this series, never played any and they are so rare to find ;_;
Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Ring of Fates
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Echoes of Time - These FF games aren't supposed to be great, but...
Pokemon Conquest
There are probably a lot more, and I'm always looking for more suggestions. Here are a couple lists of top DS games and DS RPGs for reference. (And one I found on reddit linking to neogaf that is a really comprehensive RPG essentials list)
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=503191
http://www.rpgfan.com/features/Top_20_DS_Games/index.html - Ok so some of them aren't RPGs, but whatever
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Top-10-Best-Nintendo-DS-RPGs-Role-Playing-At-Its-Finest-On-The-DS - Some weird choices, some very good choices
http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/43417/best-ds-games/
http://vsrecommendedgames.wikia.com/wiki/Nintendo_DS
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/08/08/the-top-25-nintendo-ds-games-2?page=1 - I hate those multi page lists, whatever
http://kotaku.com/5878896/the-12-best-games-for-the-ds
http://www.gamesradar.com/best-ds-games/
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/402812/best-nintendo-ds-games-9-years-50-must-own-games/
http://bossdungeon.com/our-favourite-games-on-nintendo-ds/
I've also been watching a lot of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls videos on youtube. Here are a few links and articles. I still think Demon's Souls is the best out of the Souls games. Its what started it all, and for me, it was the most intense experience, with perfect atmosphere, controls and animations. There has been a slight downward trend in the animations, and to me Dark Souls II has slightly clunkier UI and animations than the other games. I need to play more of it though, perhaps once I've finished my dissertation and exams...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-23-demons-souls-retrospective
http://bossdungeon.com/demystifying-demons/
http://www.rocketchainsaw.com.au/deep-darkness-demons-souls-retrospective/
Showing posts with label PS3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PS3. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Lightning Returns
This is a pretty cool way for Square Enix to recap the story from the Final Fantasy XIII games so far (which is overly confusing and convoluted in a Kingdom Hearts-esque way.)
I have pretty average opinions of the Final Fantasy XIII games so far, but I'm quite interested to pick this final part in the trilogy up to see how the story will end.
I have pretty average opinions of the Final Fantasy XIII games so far, but I'm quite interested to pick this final part in the trilogy up to see how the story will end.
Monday, January 6, 2014
First hour impressions #2
Hopefully everyone has had a good holiday so far! For me I've enjoyed spending time with friends and family, and helping out with Christmas preparations like the dinner and eating copious amounts of said Christmas dinner-turkey, bacon, sausages, gravy, potatoes (both roast and mashed with chives and herbs), maple parsnips. bread sauce, sage and onion stuffing, oatmeal stuffing, brussel sprouts (with walnuts and bacon, as each year we try different recipes to liven up everyone's favourite oft-maligned cruciferous vegetable lol.)
Ok so I've been putting off writing this post for a while now, and my motivation has slowly diminished for playing the first hour of more games along with the approach up to Christmas and my attempts (successful and otherwise) at studying. I tried playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers Which brings me nicely onto the next game, and the second in my series of posts where I'm looking at the first hour of games.
Dragon's Crown (PS3)
Started 10:24am, 18/12/13
- amazing artstyle shown in the opening sequence really cemented what I had seen of the game in trailers. This game is really for me, even though it has exaggerated designs and could be divisive, the colours and style are just amazingly well done.
- the initial screen on starting up the game was to choose a save slot, then choose the character details. Multiplayer integration looks important and fairly seamless-there isn't a seperate multiplayer option, its all one mode from the looks of things. I went with the Elf archer, who had a fairly 'normal' design, as opposed to the exaggerated Sorceress and others which kind of made this game viral before it had even released.
- It took me around 5 or 6 minutes to get to the beginning tutorial, and around 6 or 7 minutes, the first combat section where they show you the controls. Now, here is where I got stuck for longer than I should have. Its nothing to do with the quality of the game per se, its more due to the fact I was playing on a small 20"ish screen from a few metres away. I couldn't make out what the button prompts were saying, and like in those fighting game tutorials where you push certain combinations or perform certain tasks to move onto the next, I couldn't move on for a while. So play on a big TV in future! That's my note to myself.
- There are such amazingly drawn environments and characters, and similar to Bravely Default which I've been playing recently, it feels like you are playing through the pages of an artbook. I found myself just pausing to look at the backgrounds as they panned out and I got to new areas.
- This is definitely one of the best looking 2D games I've seen, perhaps the very best. Its to be expected from Vanillaware, who previously released Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade
- The game has an interesting looking world map, which scrolls across at great speed to our first location, and dungeon.
- The locales are very nicely done, with some really good looking lighting and water effects.
- The first boss (Harpy) gave me some problems, and ended up killing me once. I immediately came back to life and continued the fight from where I left off, and didn't really understand how.
- After beating that boss, the stage ended in a sort of arcade-like way, and we got rewarded with spoils (items), exp and other goodness after this first main quest. They then give an introduction to the appraisal system that the game has. It reminded me of Diablo in that we have to identify the items before their effects can be known and you can decide what you want to do with them. Well, you can sell items without appraising, but its not recommended value-wise. I had enough money to appraise all my items, sell one, and repair my armour, after which I kept the rest of the items. I'm actually kind of surprised that they weren't more harsh with the money they give you. I wouldn't have been surprised if they went all out with hardcore old school difficulty, it would have fit, with all the other oldschool features in this game.
- I also see how the party system will work in single player - you can find bones of fallen wanderer, resurrect them and have them join your party. I get some Dwarf warrior NPC who compliments my slightly more fragile ranged combat style as a tank.
- I got the next main quest in my journal, and a sub quest, and I took up the sub quest, which took me to the dungeon I'd just been to, so I went back through that a 2nd time quickly, and that was the hour.
Hopefully these impressions help in some way if you are or were on the fence about trying this game out.
Source: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=638953
http://www.itsartmag.com/features/dragons-crown-concept-art/
http://www.itsartmag.com/features/dragons-crown-concept-art/#.UsDNgbS49eE
http://youtu.be/7dZrwslwM4Q
Saturday, December 21, 2013
First hour impressions #1
Legasista (PS3)
This game is a dungeon crawling RPG and looked quite gameplay heavy and loot driven, similar to Cladun in many ways. I enjoyed that game and never actually picked up it's sequel, so decided to pick this one up.
I finally got around to playing it now that I have some more
So here are my notes and thoughts that I made during the first hour of playing this game. Will I enjoy it, or go back to it some day soon? I don't like starting games and then going back to them much later. So, it seems an hour is a good time to invest into a game to get a good idea of how the game will play without getting too invested into the game if I don't have time to put into finishing it.
Started 23:35pm, 17/12/13
- The game initially impresses me with it's music, which has a good mix of sounds, from some sort of folksy sound in fitting with an RPG town, some quite different latin sounds, and some retro sounding RPG sounds. This is why I'm no good reviewing soundtracks or music in game lol.. I'll post a link to one of the tracks I liked here.
- The animated sprites in dialogue scenes are quite well done, with dynamic moving characters showing some expression related to the dialogue.
- The default option seems to be Japanese voice acting, with subtitles. The text is really crisp and has a nice font as well. Quite easy to read even on the small 20"-ish screen I'm using at the moment. Not my default screen it has to be said, that one is through in my term-time flat in Glasgow.
- The game looks very gameplay and action-RPG orientated, with only a small bit of exposition, dialogue, and then straight into a series of tutorial dungeons.
- The game has similar gameplay to the Cladun games on PSP, with hack and slash combat and very detailed number heavy gameplay. Attacks do X.YY damage, i.e. to 2 decimal points such as 1.55 damage per hit. So those RPG fans who like their stats and micromanagement of equipment may appreciate this.
- The character designs are interesting after the initial revealing of the protagonist (who seems pretty generic to me. He is one of those male protagonists who has an outfit that shows off the thorax and abdomen but covers the arms and shoulders...They seem way more common than they should be..) So, fairly typical NIS characters that remind me of Atelier Iris or Etrian Odyssey in a way.
- The gameplay complexity starts to up fairly quickly towards the end of the first hour, with dual HP or durability bars...or something...I'm not too sure, but I think they correspond with the main hand equipment and off hand equipment, i.e. sword and shield durability/HP.
- Right before I stopped, the complexity started getting 'worse', with some kind of mana related equipment system which really reminded me of Cladun and FFVIII's junctioning stystem mixed together. I'll have to dive back in with the tutorials or maybe even starting over when I go back to the game some other day.
I'm a big fan of dungeon crawling RPGs and hope I can get back into this at some point. The next game I analyse based on the first hour will be another PS3 game, with some similarities! That's the only clue for now! I've already played it, so hopefully will post before Christmas comes around. I hope your holidays are going nicely so far!
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Recent Purchases #7 ~ DS collecting
Ok, so I've been pretty busy this summer, a lot of stuff has been happening; issues with university such as exams and dissertation topic for next year, finding a flat for next academic year and leaving the flat I was in, arranging two work placements with optician multiples (Boots Opticians and Specsavers), fitting in a summer holiday to Chamonix in the French Alps and then a few days in Brugge in Belgium and unfortunately having some relatives and family relatives passing away, so quite a hectic rollercoaster of a summer so far, and we're approaching winter pretty quickly it looks like...
I've not really done one of these posts since back in February 2013, I believe...I was planning on doing a post where I kind of went in to more detail about what I've been up to this summer, and I think I may do that, but I found that I had this post as a draft from a while back and thought I'd finish it off. That was quite a slippery slope however, as I looked through my backlog I uncovered more and more games that I'd bought since I last posted... So lets get into the games I picked up, and wherever I can, I'll talk about my history with the series, and thoughts on each games.
Ok, so first of all, forgive the grainy, blurry pictures, it is my Blackberry tablet that I took them on, and its kinda terribad for quality.. Then again, I couldn't be bothered digging out a camera or a phone with a decent quality camera.
So I named this post DS Collecting when I originally wrote it, this is because I've been picking up a lot of DS games as they appear to drop in price as more stores pick up 3DS titles. There are a lot of DS games that I either played briefly when they came out and never picked up or finished, or series that people were really enjoying and I just didn't get a chance to check them out. So a lot of these DS games are ones that I'd heard good things about or were really good deals. There are a lot more that I'm wanting to pick up when I can, some of which are included on my Backloggery wishlist.
Advance Wars: Dual Strike (DS) 07/15/13, £4 preowned, Game-Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh
Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (DS) 06/04/13, £3 preowned, CEX-Edinburgh
These two games I picked up for less than £5 each. Dark Conflict was 2nd hand in CEX as I had really been enjoying the Fire Emblem games on the GBA and wanted to check this series out. Its a series my brother had checked out way back and been trying to get me to play. I never did, so finally decided to start with the DS games. Ideally I wanted to pick up the GBA games, but I couldn't seem to find a good auction or buy it now deal on ebay for either of the games. So I'm very interested in getting into these games, and hopefully the storylines aren't too obnoxious...on a recent episode of RPGcast I wasn't hearing the best feedback on these DS titles..
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS) 05/08/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Inverness
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (DS) 05/13/13, £5.98 preowned, ebay.co.uk
Professor Layton and the Lost Future (DS) 05/08/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Inverness
The Layton series is one that experienced great popularity back when they came out, at least in Europe. I played little bits here and there, helping people out with the puzzles as they played through them but as they were so popular, they held their value for a long time and I never picked the games up myself. I was up in Inverness visiting some family and saw Curious Village and Lost Future in a two for £20 deal, so I picked these up on a bit of a whim. I began playing the first game and managed to finish the story off within a day or two, and only a few play sessions, enjoying it quite a bit. This one had good pacing and puzzles. It was quite a breath of fresh air compared to long RPGs that I am normally playing, and after a while I went back to the second game, Pandora's Box and played through the story of this one. This took a bit longer to get through than the first one, and I felt although towards the end the story took quite an interesting turn, it just didn't hold up compared to the first game. It dragged in places and the story just was not as well designed. Although there was less backtracking and the puzzles were integrated into the story situations, it felt like a case of one step forward, two steps backward. Still a very good series however, and I'm looking forward to jumping into what I've heard is the best of this original trilogy, the Lost Future. After the at times mediocre Pandora's Box though, I'm taking some time to play some other styles of games.
Project X Zone (3DS) 07/15/13, £22.00 new, Amazon
Back when this game was being talked about on podcasts and forums, most people were under the impression that it would never come out in english. It came as a big shock to me and a lot of people when it was announced for localisation. I still don't understand how it could have been possible with all the characters from different series (some of which never even came out in Europe, Super Robot Taisen OG for one) owned by different companies. It must have been a difficult game to actually make money. People unfamiliar with RPGs or these various characters will just see this game and get kind of confused I'd imagine. Anyway, its a pretty awesomely made game. The character portraits are well drawn, the battles are quite fun at first (they start to get quite long and drawn out...and a tad repetitive later on). The story doesn't make a lot of sense, but there is a lot of fun to be had with this game. Its very long, with 5 prologue chapters and around 40 story chapters (each of which consists of 1 large battle, a fair chunk of dialogue and a sort of small introduction skirmish or battle.) From what I've heard, it clocks in at around 50-80 hrs long. So far, I've just finished chapter 25 I think, so I've still got a fair bit of the game left.
-Edit: Since starting the blog post, I finished this game off in 75 hours. Yep, that was just the story, there are no real side quests to speak of. Its a long, at some times repetitive game, and I would say its at least 20 hours too long.
However, its worth buying this game just to support these kind of stupid (risky, but awesome) business decisions I think. There is a market for these kind of niche games, even though its a small amount of people in the US and Europe that are interested, we need to show companies that it is worth while.
Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS) 04/19/13, £ new, G-Force, Glasgow
Fire Emblem is a series I've only recently got into, after seeing the original (well for me, I think of FE7 (the first GBA game us PAL gamers got) as the original, even though I know the series has a much deeper history. Any way, FE7 blew me away, with its brilliant localisation, intense permadeath difficulty (if you try to do things without losing any characters like I eventually managed) and fairly mature themes of war and politics. So after playing Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, I heard Awakening would be coming out in Europe and knew I would have to get it. The 3DS was quite light on RPGs, and I'd heard a lot of good talk about this game. So when it was getting close to release, I was surprised that I didn't just simply preorder on Amazon or some website like I normally do. I was really taking a risk in waiting and seeing if retail shops here would have copies of the game, as Fire Emblem games can become very hard to find and increase in value quickly. This was right after one of my final 3rd year exams, and I headed down to the shops to see if I could pick this up right away, and I was starting to sweat as I hoped somewhere would have this game in stock. I had read up on this game, watched a lot of videos from Nintendo and other sources and really hyped myself up for Awakening. Thankfully an independent game shop in Glasgow had this in stock, and I picked it up, eager to get into this game as quickly as I could. When I got around to playing it, it really didn't dissapoint me
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (3DS) 03/06/13, £29.86 new, shopto.net
This game, I was a little apprehensive to pick up..I've posted impressions of the demo back when it came out. You can read that here if you are interested. I was actually quite happy with how the game turned out, even though it seemed to repeat some of the content in places, from different perspectives of sorts, as you play through this fairly short 2.5D metroidvania platformer/action RPG with 3 different characters. It doesn't quite compare to the fun I had with the GBA and DS 'vania games, but its still a pretty solid title for the 3DS.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS) 03/25/13, £31.86 new, Amazon
Oh man, I'm a big fan of the Monster Hunter games...I get way too addicted to them, farming new sets of armour and weapons, slowly progressing through the required quests. Its a simple, lite (or no) story, with really rewarding, satisfying gameplay that they have refined over the last couple of games. I've put a lot of time (over 230 hours) on and off over summer into MH3U, finishing off the village (single player) quests, and working my way to G-rank in the guild (multiplayer/single player) quests on my own (because I only have the 3DS version, and any friends I know with the game are too difficult to pin down to actually want to play the game multiplayer.) The 3DS version doesn't have any online facility to play with people like some of the other 3DS games like the new Mario Kart, but I still believe (for me) that it is the preferred platform. I like being able to take the 3DS on the train if I'm going somewhere (I take a lot of public transport because I can't drive yet) and I like the mobility of the 3DS. If someone is watching something on TV, I can kind of watch both (MH takes a lot of concentration at times though.) I know you can do something similar with the Wii U, but for me, its still not a good time to jump on board with the Wii U. I'm waiting for maybe one or two more games that interest me. So far, there is Monster Hunter 3U, which I would definitely rebuy, Earthbound on the Virtual Console, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem (its a Wii U game when it eventually releases...right? :s) So its slowly getting there with the games I'm interested to play. I will pick one up fairly soon, I have a few friends who are already way further than me in MH that I could finally play some quests with if I pick a Wii U up.
Infinite Space (DS) 06/03/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Perth
Time and Eternity (PS3) 06/28/13, £40 new, GAME-Perth
Okamiden (DS) 07/15/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh
White Knight Chronicles: Origins (PSP) 07/31/13, €5 preowned, Free Record Shop, Brugge
Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Wii) £4 preowned, CEX-Edinburgh
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume (DS) £5 preowned, Game-Perth
Contact (DS) £5 preowned, Game-Perth
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (GBA) 05/16/13, £10 preowned, ebay.co.uk
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (DS) 01/24/13, £24.99 new, ebay.co.uk
And a bunch more stuff I bought or got for my birthday:
Pokemon X (3DS)
Pokemon Black 2 (DS)
King's Field (PS1)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 (DS)
Dragon's Crown (PS3)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked (3DS)
I'll try and write some more impressions about these games as I go along. I've been writing this blog post for far too long now.
Artbooks from anime and video games are one of my smaller (some might say niche) collections, and I've picked up quite a few recently, notably the Death Note Obata Takeshi Illustrations, which normally goes for a lot on ebay. I found it in a shop in Brugge when we were on holiday aong with the Midori Foo artbook for really good prices. Some of these are really amazing artbooks. I recommend The Sky to any Final Fantasy fan, as it is now readily available..after that fiasco with the limited original run. Damn Amazon UK...
Obata Takeshi Illustrations - Blanc et Noir
Midori Foo's Book of Pictures
Yoshitaka Amano's The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy Slipcased Edition
Devil Survivor Official Material Collection
Dragon Age: The World of Thedas volume 1
A Reader's Guide to R.A. Salvatore's The Legend of Drizzt
Diablo III: Book of Tyrael
I've not really done one of these posts since back in February 2013, I believe...I was planning on doing a post where I kind of went in to more detail about what I've been up to this summer, and I think I may do that, but I found that I had this post as a draft from a while back and thought I'd finish it off. That was quite a slippery slope however, as I looked through my backlog I uncovered more and more games that I'd bought since I last posted... So lets get into the games I picked up, and wherever I can, I'll talk about my history with the series, and thoughts on each games.
Ok, so first of all, forgive the grainy, blurry pictures, it is my Blackberry tablet that I took them on, and its kinda terribad for quality.. Then again, I couldn't be bothered digging out a camera or a phone with a decent quality camera.
So I named this post DS Collecting when I originally wrote it, this is because I've been picking up a lot of DS games as they appear to drop in price as more stores pick up 3DS titles. There are a lot of DS games that I either played briefly when they came out and never picked up or finished, or series that people were really enjoying and I just didn't get a chance to check them out. So a lot of these DS games are ones that I'd heard good things about or were really good deals. There are a lot more that I'm wanting to pick up when I can, some of which are included on my Backloggery wishlist.
Advance Wars: Dual Strike (DS) 07/15/13, £4 preowned, Game-Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh
Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (DS) 06/04/13, £3 preowned, CEX-Edinburgh
These two games I picked up for less than £5 each. Dark Conflict was 2nd hand in CEX as I had really been enjoying the Fire Emblem games on the GBA and wanted to check this series out. Its a series my brother had checked out way back and been trying to get me to play. I never did, so finally decided to start with the DS games. Ideally I wanted to pick up the GBA games, but I couldn't seem to find a good auction or buy it now deal on ebay for either of the games. So I'm very interested in getting into these games, and hopefully the storylines aren't too obnoxious...on a recent episode of RPGcast I wasn't hearing the best feedback on these DS titles..
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS) 05/08/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Inverness
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (DS) 05/13/13, £5.98 preowned, ebay.co.uk
Professor Layton and the Lost Future (DS) 05/08/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Inverness
The Layton series is one that experienced great popularity back when they came out, at least in Europe. I played little bits here and there, helping people out with the puzzles as they played through them but as they were so popular, they held their value for a long time and I never picked the games up myself. I was up in Inverness visiting some family and saw Curious Village and Lost Future in a two for £20 deal, so I picked these up on a bit of a whim. I began playing the first game and managed to finish the story off within a day or two, and only a few play sessions, enjoying it quite a bit. This one had good pacing and puzzles. It was quite a breath of fresh air compared to long RPGs that I am normally playing, and after a while I went back to the second game, Pandora's Box and played through the story of this one. This took a bit longer to get through than the first one, and I felt although towards the end the story took quite an interesting turn, it just didn't hold up compared to the first game. It dragged in places and the story just was not as well designed. Although there was less backtracking and the puzzles were integrated into the story situations, it felt like a case of one step forward, two steps backward. Still a very good series however, and I'm looking forward to jumping into what I've heard is the best of this original trilogy, the Lost Future. After the at times mediocre Pandora's Box though, I'm taking some time to play some other styles of games.
Project X Zone (3DS) 07/15/13, £22.00 new, Amazon
Back when this game was being talked about on podcasts and forums, most people were under the impression that it would never come out in english. It came as a big shock to me and a lot of people when it was announced for localisation. I still don't understand how it could have been possible with all the characters from different series (some of which never even came out in Europe, Super Robot Taisen OG for one) owned by different companies. It must have been a difficult game to actually make money. People unfamiliar with RPGs or these various characters will just see this game and get kind of confused I'd imagine. Anyway, its a pretty awesomely made game. The character portraits are well drawn, the battles are quite fun at first (they start to get quite long and drawn out...and a tad repetitive later on). The story doesn't make a lot of sense, but there is a lot of fun to be had with this game. Its very long, with 5 prologue chapters and around 40 story chapters (each of which consists of 1 large battle, a fair chunk of dialogue and a sort of small introduction skirmish or battle.) From what I've heard, it clocks in at around 50-80 hrs long. So far, I've just finished chapter 25 I think, so I've still got a fair bit of the game left.
-Edit: Since starting the blog post, I finished this game off in 75 hours. Yep, that was just the story, there are no real side quests to speak of. Its a long, at some times repetitive game, and I would say its at least 20 hours too long.
However, its worth buying this game just to support these kind of stupid (risky, but awesome) business decisions I think. There is a market for these kind of niche games, even though its a small amount of people in the US and Europe that are interested, we need to show companies that it is worth while.
Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS) 04/19/13, £ new, G-Force, Glasgow
Fire Emblem is a series I've only recently got into, after seeing the original (well for me, I think of FE7 (the first GBA game us PAL gamers got) as the original, even though I know the series has a much deeper history. Any way, FE7 blew me away, with its brilliant localisation, intense permadeath difficulty (if you try to do things without losing any characters like I eventually managed) and fairly mature themes of war and politics. So after playing Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, I heard Awakening would be coming out in Europe and knew I would have to get it. The 3DS was quite light on RPGs, and I'd heard a lot of good talk about this game. So when it was getting close to release, I was surprised that I didn't just simply preorder on Amazon or some website like I normally do. I was really taking a risk in waiting and seeing if retail shops here would have copies of the game, as Fire Emblem games can become very hard to find and increase in value quickly. This was right after one of my final 3rd year exams, and I headed down to the shops to see if I could pick this up right away, and I was starting to sweat as I hoped somewhere would have this game in stock. I had read up on this game, watched a lot of videos from Nintendo and other sources and really hyped myself up for Awakening. Thankfully an independent game shop in Glasgow had this in stock, and I picked it up, eager to get into this game as quickly as I could. When I got around to playing it, it really didn't dissapoint me
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (3DS) 03/06/13, £29.86 new, shopto.net
This game, I was a little apprehensive to pick up..I've posted impressions of the demo back when it came out. You can read that here if you are interested. I was actually quite happy with how the game turned out, even though it seemed to repeat some of the content in places, from different perspectives of sorts, as you play through this fairly short 2.5D metroidvania platformer/action RPG with 3 different characters. It doesn't quite compare to the fun I had with the GBA and DS 'vania games, but its still a pretty solid title for the 3DS.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS) 03/25/13, £31.86 new, Amazon
Oh man, I'm a big fan of the Monster Hunter games...I get way too addicted to them, farming new sets of armour and weapons, slowly progressing through the required quests. Its a simple, lite (or no) story, with really rewarding, satisfying gameplay that they have refined over the last couple of games. I've put a lot of time (over 230 hours) on and off over summer into MH3U, finishing off the village (single player) quests, and working my way to G-rank in the guild (multiplayer/single player) quests on my own (because I only have the 3DS version, and any friends I know with the game are too difficult to pin down to actually want to play the game multiplayer.) The 3DS version doesn't have any online facility to play with people like some of the other 3DS games like the new Mario Kart, but I still believe (for me) that it is the preferred platform. I like being able to take the 3DS on the train if I'm going somewhere (I take a lot of public transport because I can't drive yet) and I like the mobility of the 3DS. If someone is watching something on TV, I can kind of watch both (MH takes a lot of concentration at times though.) I know you can do something similar with the Wii U, but for me, its still not a good time to jump on board with the Wii U. I'm waiting for maybe one or two more games that interest me. So far, there is Monster Hunter 3U, which I would definitely rebuy, Earthbound on the Virtual Console, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem (its a Wii U game when it eventually releases...right? :s) So its slowly getting there with the games I'm interested to play. I will pick one up fairly soon, I have a few friends who are already way further than me in MH that I could finally play some quests with if I pick a Wii U up.
Infinite Space (DS) 06/03/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Perth
Time and Eternity (PS3) 06/28/13, £40 new, GAME-Perth
Okamiden (DS) 07/15/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh
White Knight Chronicles: Origins (PSP) 07/31/13, €5 preowned, Free Record Shop, Brugge
Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Wii) £4 preowned, CEX-Edinburgh
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume (DS) £5 preowned, Game-Perth
Contact (DS) £5 preowned, Game-Perth
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (GBA) 05/16/13, £10 preowned, ebay.co.uk
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (DS) 01/24/13, £24.99 new, ebay.co.uk
And a bunch more stuff I bought or got for my birthday:
Pokemon X (3DS)
Pokemon Black 2 (DS)
King's Field (PS1)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 (DS)
Dragon's Crown (PS3)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked (3DS)
I'll try and write some more impressions about these games as I go along. I've been writing this blog post for far too long now.
Artbooks from anime and video games are one of my smaller (some might say niche) collections, and I've picked up quite a few recently, notably the Death Note Obata Takeshi Illustrations, which normally goes for a lot on ebay. I found it in a shop in Brugge when we were on holiday aong with the Midori Foo artbook for really good prices. Some of these are really amazing artbooks. I recommend The Sky to any Final Fantasy fan, as it is now readily available..after that fiasco with the limited original run. Damn Amazon UK...
Midori Foo's Book of Pictures
Yoshitaka Amano's The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy Slipcased Edition
Devil Survivor Official Material Collection
Dragon Age: The World of Thedas volume 1
A Reader's Guide to R.A. Salvatore's The Legend of Drizzt
Diablo III: Book of Tyrael
Friday, April 12, 2013
From Software update
I'm a big fan of the Souls games that From Software have released and have been really interested in the recent talk about Dark Souls 2. There is still a lot that is unknown about the game, but yesterday we were treated to a 10-12 min gameplay demo (which was brought to us by IGN exclusively.) So in the run up to that demo airing at 8pm GMT, I was doing some reading and listening to podcasts and videos about the Demons Souls and Dark Souls games. I was browsing the net looking for some information on the imminent Dark Souls II gameplay reveal and found this old sporadic podcast type discussion on Demon Souls and Dark Souls, where some of the Gametrailers folks talk about their experiences with the games, what they are expecting from the new games. The first episode is from the time when Dark Souls was just about to come out, so there is some interesting footage from the review (or early pre-release) version of Dark Souls. Its quite cool to listen in and see what they were discussing and how the final version panned out. Both of the episodes of this fairly unknown, sporadic and specific podcast are embedded below.
If you've not yet seen it, the link to the gameplay demo of Dark Souls II can be found HERE.There has been more and more news coming out each day it seems. Dark Souls II should be very interesting, but from what I saw of the demo, it doesn't seem to change an awful lot from Dark Souls. When I read the articles in Edge a few months ago (Link, Link) I was expecting a massively different game, but along the same lines as Demons Souls and Dark Souls. I'm not going to lie, I was a little dissapointed with the unpolished, clunky look of the Dark Souls II demo, and the fairly bland, unimaginative monsters in the demo. I'm definitely aware that this is an early version and they will refine things like the character animation. (To me, he just looked odd the way he was walking...It was too fast, too confident and sure of himself... and he didn't look like he was wearing armour.)
Anyway, my minor gripes aside, I'm definitely really into the look of Dark Souls II, and can't wait for some more news.
If you've not yet seen it, the link to the gameplay demo of Dark Souls II can be found HERE.There has been more and more news coming out each day it seems. Dark Souls II should be very interesting, but from what I saw of the demo, it doesn't seem to change an awful lot from Dark Souls. When I read the articles in Edge a few months ago (Link, Link) I was expecting a massively different game, but along the same lines as Demons Souls and Dark Souls. I'm not going to lie, I was a little dissapointed with the unpolished, clunky look of the Dark Souls II demo, and the fairly bland, unimaginative monsters in the demo. I'm definitely aware that this is an early version and they will refine things like the character animation. (To me, he just looked odd the way he was walking...It was too fast, too confident and sure of himself... and he didn't look like he was wearing armour.)
Anyway, my minor gripes aside, I'm definitely really into the look of Dark Souls II, and can't wait for some more news.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Recent Purchases #6 ~ Holiday haul
So I've not done one of these posts in a while it seems...the last one was many months ago, in August last year. I wouldn't say I buy a lot of games, compared to some collectors and youtubers I know online, but probably compared to the average dude, I buy quite a fair few. Anyway, this post is a little about some of the games I picked up recently, whether it be presents, games I've bought for myself or whatever. In some of the Recent Purchases, I've talked about the gaming merchandise I've picked up, for example video game artbooks (something I semi-collect outside of games) and at the end of this post I'll talk a little bit about one of the anime I've been watching. I quite like the idea of talking about some non-gaming stuff briefly in these posts. Apologies for the blurry photo...my Blackberry playbook can't take brilliant photos, and then the lighting in my room was really crappy.
Anyway, on with the post! Hopefully it doesn't look like I'm trying to brag about the games I've been picking up! I don't get that many and I know myself I have smaller collections than many others, but what I like to go for are games that I've been really wanting. You won't normally see me pick up copies of Madden 06 or Fifa 99 just because I can get them for 20p, for example. A lot of the games I pick up are titles I've heard very good things about, or are in certain sub-genres that are appealing to me at any one time. For example, sometimes I go through 1st person dungeon crawler RPG kicks, or times where I'm really into focussing on my Strategy RPGs. A good example of a game like this where I've had a massive interest in the game for ages would be Radiant Historia (DS). I live in Europe and unfortunately we never saw a release for this game. It has had such amazing hype and praise from critics for the most part, and only the price had kept me from picking this one up. Importing through Ebay is fairly pricey, with a copy normally running between £30 and 40. So Christmas this year and I tried to pick my brain for games that were in this ballpark...games I'd really wanted to try and were a bit outside my price range. In a toss up between Radiant Historia and Skies of Arcadia, I settled for this one, ordered it and was reimbursed by my parents. Definitely looking forward to playing this really beautiful looking RPG with an interesting looking combat system and story concept. Time travel in RPGs is quite often good-Chrono Trigger anyone? Then again...FFXIII-2 was a bit of a mess..
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PS3) - This one was a bit of a surprise to me. My birthday was back in October and on the last day of term (December) one of my friends gave me this for my birthday. They'd apparently been trying to pick the game up on ebay for a while, with no luck from one seller on two occasions. Maybe it got lost in the post, or maybe he didn't send it. Either way, they ended up getting screwed out of a lot more money than they should have spent on me, for sure. Definitely looking forward to trying this game out. RA Salvatore is one of my favourite fantasy authors that I grew up reading, and he worked on the world design, or script, or some aspect of this game. The only thing that makes me a little wary is some of the design from Todd McFarlane (the Spawn guy) It looks a weird mishmash of styles in this game.
Zone of the Enders HD Collection (PS3) - This, along with Radiant Historia was the other game I had asked for over Christmas, and was really happy that I got it. My uncle had gone to a lot of trouble to get it, as it was really hard to find in shops it turns out :o I missed out on a lot of PS2 games as I never got the console until way afterwards, so in a way, these HD collections are perfect for gamers like me, who want an affordable and sensible way to pick up entire series, or trilogies. I've played the first Zone of the Enders for an hour or two so far, and I actually got stuck by the odd design and lack of direction. I'm at a bit where I need to knock out 2 forcefields, one on either side of something? Its pretty early on, but it kind of put me off because I was just backtracking to find passwords. I'll get back into this once I have access to my PS3 at some point soon. Currently I'm through at uni with only my DS, PSP and PS2.
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (DS) - I played the first Etrian Odyssey a couple years back and it took me a long time of on/off playing to get through, but I really enjoyed it overall. I originally purchased EO1 and EO2 from ebay (we only got the first game released in Europe...damn yous!) and I've really had the urge to play through more 1st person dungeon crawler RPGs recently, so picked up the reprint of the third game when I saw a fairly good price (preorder) on ebay. So this one will hopefully be with me soon. I suppose that means I have to play through Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard first though. Way too many games for my own good...
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS) - I picked this one, and Magna Carta 2 (Xbox 360) up recently when I was away up to Perth for a dental appointment (yeah, my Dentist is away up North many miles away from where I stay: see my previous escapade) I was trying to burn some time and thought I'd have a look in Gamestation in Perth. Well...Game and Gamestation (the same company essentially) had some problems last year and had to go into administration, and closed a lot of branches. The Gamestation in Perth was one that had closed apparantely, and I hadn't realised that because I hadn;t been up there in months. So I thought, theres a Game branch over in the shopping centre, and from what I'd seen of the stores that remained open, the majority seemed to be in malls or shopping centre complexes. Well anyway, they were still open so I went in to check out the games they had. Turns out they had a lot of games I'd been after, for fairly cheap (either preowned or in the sale.) Some of the ones I saw that looked interesting were (with some rough prices): Dragon Age: Origins Awakening (£5, Xbox 360), Infinite Space (£10, DS) and Aliens Infestation (£5, DS). I didn't pick them up, but regret not getting Infinite Space...that game is really hard to find online... So far I've not played either of Solatorobo or Magna Carta 2 yet unfortunately.
Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360) - I can't remember if I talked about this one on the blog just yet. But I held off on this one for absolutely ages to try and get it cheaper. It turns out that probably wasn't a good idea, as I heard all the hype and then rage about the story ending. I have somehow managed to remain spoiler free, and picked this one up after christmas in a sale in Game for £15. Really interested to see how the story will finish up. I liked the first two games, but I've been slowly losing interest in the franchise... a couple hundred too many DLC packs and stupid things like the Cerberus network. EA ruined Dragon Age and Mass Effect, which is so unfortunate...they had such good prospects..
Inazuma Eleven (DS) - this was a game I picked up right after Christmas. I received a gift token for HMV and decided to go for this one with it. It was a toss up between this and Ar Tonelico Qoga on the PS3 when I was in the store, and I'm definitely glad I went for this one. I havent played any of either series before this, and from what I saw of Ar Tonelico on the back of the box, I'm definitely happy with Inazuma. Its such an over the top game. Its like a good mix of anime like Beyblades, Yu-Gi-Oh and films like Shaolin Soccer. The only low point was some of the time it seemed to drag a bit at times(where you're just tracking across the map from area to area) and also...the horrendous English opening theme. But the game itself is really engaging and addictive once you get into it and realise how to control it best. The tutorials don't do a very good job so I ended up taking about 7 hours to master the systems (more or less.)
Eden of the East (Anime DVD) - This was a bit of a random pick up for me. I like to buy the odd anime movie or series when they release in the UK (but only at decent prices) We saw this one in a second hand shop "CEX" that has quite a lot of branches all across the UK. They do really well because they give cash for tradeins, and take anything from ipods, phones, computer components, games, dvds, and a lot more. Anyway, it was only a fiver. The synopsis sounded interesting, and I had heard good things. So, after a wee check of animenewsnetwork on my girlfriend's smartphone (I refuse to own one...FOR NOW! Gimme a break! lol) I picked this up. We've watched half of it so far, and its getting really interesting =) It has a dark edge, but its a lot more than just a dark, gritty anime. It has it's funny moments, it has a quite nice romance theme to it as well.
Anyway, on with the post! Hopefully it doesn't look like I'm trying to brag about the games I've been picking up! I don't get that many and I know myself I have smaller collections than many others, but what I like to go for are games that I've been really wanting. You won't normally see me pick up copies of Madden 06 or Fifa 99 just because I can get them for 20p, for example. A lot of the games I pick up are titles I've heard very good things about, or are in certain sub-genres that are appealing to me at any one time. For example, sometimes I go through 1st person dungeon crawler RPG kicks, or times where I'm really into focussing on my Strategy RPGs. A good example of a game like this where I've had a massive interest in the game for ages would be Radiant Historia (DS). I live in Europe and unfortunately we never saw a release for this game. It has had such amazing hype and praise from critics for the most part, and only the price had kept me from picking this one up. Importing through Ebay is fairly pricey, with a copy normally running between £30 and 40. So Christmas this year and I tried to pick my brain for games that were in this ballpark...games I'd really wanted to try and were a bit outside my price range. In a toss up between Radiant Historia and Skies of Arcadia, I settled for this one, ordered it and was reimbursed by my parents. Definitely looking forward to playing this really beautiful looking RPG with an interesting looking combat system and story concept. Time travel in RPGs is quite often good-Chrono Trigger anyone? Then again...FFXIII-2 was a bit of a mess..
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PS3) - This one was a bit of a surprise to me. My birthday was back in October and on the last day of term (December) one of my friends gave me this for my birthday. They'd apparently been trying to pick the game up on ebay for a while, with no luck from one seller on two occasions. Maybe it got lost in the post, or maybe he didn't send it. Either way, they ended up getting screwed out of a lot more money than they should have spent on me, for sure. Definitely looking forward to trying this game out. RA Salvatore is one of my favourite fantasy authors that I grew up reading, and he worked on the world design, or script, or some aspect of this game. The only thing that makes me a little wary is some of the design from Todd McFarlane (the Spawn guy) It looks a weird mishmash of styles in this game.
Zone of the Enders HD Collection (PS3) - This, along with Radiant Historia was the other game I had asked for over Christmas, and was really happy that I got it. My uncle had gone to a lot of trouble to get it, as it was really hard to find in shops it turns out :o I missed out on a lot of PS2 games as I never got the console until way afterwards, so in a way, these HD collections are perfect for gamers like me, who want an affordable and sensible way to pick up entire series, or trilogies. I've played the first Zone of the Enders for an hour or two so far, and I actually got stuck by the odd design and lack of direction. I'm at a bit where I need to knock out 2 forcefields, one on either side of something? Its pretty early on, but it kind of put me off because I was just backtracking to find passwords. I'll get back into this once I have access to my PS3 at some point soon. Currently I'm through at uni with only my DS, PSP and PS2.
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (DS) - I played the first Etrian Odyssey a couple years back and it took me a long time of on/off playing to get through, but I really enjoyed it overall. I originally purchased EO1 and EO2 from ebay (we only got the first game released in Europe...damn yous!) and I've really had the urge to play through more 1st person dungeon crawler RPGs recently, so picked up the reprint of the third game when I saw a fairly good price (preorder) on ebay. So this one will hopefully be with me soon. I suppose that means I have to play through Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard first though. Way too many games for my own good...
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS) - I picked this one, and Magna Carta 2 (Xbox 360) up recently when I was away up to Perth for a dental appointment (yeah, my Dentist is away up North many miles away from where I stay: see my previous escapade) I was trying to burn some time and thought I'd have a look in Gamestation in Perth. Well...Game and Gamestation (the same company essentially) had some problems last year and had to go into administration, and closed a lot of branches. The Gamestation in Perth was one that had closed apparantely, and I hadn't realised that because I hadn;t been up there in months. So I thought, theres a Game branch over in the shopping centre, and from what I'd seen of the stores that remained open, the majority seemed to be in malls or shopping centre complexes. Well anyway, they were still open so I went in to check out the games they had. Turns out they had a lot of games I'd been after, for fairly cheap (either preowned or in the sale.) Some of the ones I saw that looked interesting were (with some rough prices): Dragon Age: Origins Awakening (£5, Xbox 360), Infinite Space (£10, DS) and Aliens Infestation (£5, DS). I didn't pick them up, but regret not getting Infinite Space...that game is really hard to find online... So far I've not played either of Solatorobo or Magna Carta 2 yet unfortunately.
Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360) - I can't remember if I talked about this one on the blog just yet. But I held off on this one for absolutely ages to try and get it cheaper. It turns out that probably wasn't a good idea, as I heard all the hype and then rage about the story ending. I have somehow managed to remain spoiler free, and picked this one up after christmas in a sale in Game for £15. Really interested to see how the story will finish up. I liked the first two games, but I've been slowly losing interest in the franchise... a couple hundred too many DLC packs and stupid things like the Cerberus network. EA ruined Dragon Age and Mass Effect, which is so unfortunate...they had such good prospects..
Inazuma Eleven (DS) - this was a game I picked up right after Christmas. I received a gift token for HMV and decided to go for this one with it. It was a toss up between this and Ar Tonelico Qoga on the PS3 when I was in the store, and I'm definitely glad I went for this one. I havent played any of either series before this, and from what I saw of Ar Tonelico on the back of the box, I'm definitely happy with Inazuma. Its such an over the top game. Its like a good mix of anime like Beyblades, Yu-Gi-Oh and films like Shaolin Soccer. The only low point was some of the time it seemed to drag a bit at times(where you're just tracking across the map from area to area) and also...the horrendous English opening theme. But the game itself is really engaging and addictive once you get into it and realise how to control it best. The tutorials don't do a very good job so I ended up taking about 7 hours to master the systems (more or less.)
Eden of the East (Anime DVD) - This was a bit of a random pick up for me. I like to buy the odd anime movie or series when they release in the UK (but only at decent prices) We saw this one in a second hand shop "CEX" that has quite a lot of branches all across the UK. They do really well because they give cash for tradeins, and take anything from ipods, phones, computer components, games, dvds, and a lot more. Anyway, it was only a fiver. The synopsis sounded interesting, and I had heard good things. So, after a wee check of animenewsnetwork on my girlfriend's smartphone (I refuse to own one...FOR NOW! Gimme a break! lol) I picked this up. We've watched half of it so far, and its getting really interesting =) It has a dark edge, but its a lot more than just a dark, gritty anime. It has it's funny moments, it has a quite nice romance theme to it as well.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Ni No Kuni Demo Impressions
I'll keep this to a short impression of the demo, as I've got imminent exams on the way...and should really be studying and not writing blog posts about video games.
So the demo for Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was released on PSN yesterday (or the day before that in America, I believe.) After wrestling the updated PSN store into submission (seriously, it took like 4 or 5 attempts to download just the demo) I got my hands on this demo. The game itself, I've been looking forward to for absolutely ages. Even despite the fact that it sold nowhere near as many copies in Japan as it should have. Studio Ghibli and Level-5 collaborating on a PS3 jRPG should definitely be an interesting project from my point of view.
Graphically, the game looks really nice. Its very sharp cel-shaded graphics, and I spent a good while just rotating the camera to look at the surroundings. It really reminds me of the look of Dragon Quest VIII and IX. It feels like those games until you get into battle, which is much more 'interesting' than the turn based Dragon Quest battles. (Although, I should add a caveat at this point. I'm a big fan of the DQ series, don't get the wrong idea. The enemies are awesome and funny, the battle system has been refined over the years and when you thrown in some monster collection from battles, you're on to a winner in my opinion. "if it ain't broke, don't fix it.")
The game looks like it could have been the next Studio Ghibli film, with some really interesting character design and high production values. I just hope the game "gels" well together. It looks like the characters in the above picture have completely different styles and looks, almost different artstyles as well. It could end up being quite a fragmented final product, so hopefully it works, but from what I have seen in the demo, it looks to be good.
A couple other links for info and impressions on Ni No Kuni so far;
http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/06/10-thoughts-on-the-ni-no-kuni-wrath-of-the-white-witch-demo-sony-playstation-3/
http://zeboyd.com/2012/12/06/ni-no-kuni-demo-impressions/
So the demo for Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was released on PSN yesterday (or the day before that in America, I believe.) After wrestling the updated PSN store into submission (seriously, it took like 4 or 5 attempts to download just the demo) I got my hands on this demo. The game itself, I've been looking forward to for absolutely ages. Even despite the fact that it sold nowhere near as many copies in Japan as it should have. Studio Ghibli and Level-5 collaborating on a PS3 jRPG should definitely be an interesting project from my point of view.
Before I went off on a tangent, I was going to talk about the battle system in Ni No Kuni...
Some in game stuff now(below), and these are what the battles look like. Very clean interface and not at all cluttered. Smooth speech bubbles and timers for actions and defending (which you can hit a button to cancel out of when you need) You can move around the battle environment freely, as in some other games. This adds a whole different dimension to the battle systems (which I found difficult to get the hang of at first-in fact, I was beaten in the first battle as I didn't realise exactly what I could do.) Hopefully the final game will have some sort of tutorial system to ease new players into the game.
The demo offers two scenarios which you have 25 minutes to play through before they end. The first of the two more or less chucks you into battle against a boss right from the start, which can be very difficult..The second of the two takes place in a volcano and has really nice detail and effects in the environment. I didn't manage to beat the boss at the volcano, but got through the timed rush to the end of the area with fairly few problems. The first scenario took me a couple of attempts to get through. It looks like there is quite a lot to think about in this game, and it makes it difficult in that the game is fairly fast paced. There are a few ways to pause it, but not a pause button per se, its more just the going into menus that will end up giving you a bit of a break if you need a "cuppa tea." Which brings me to my next point. The game has some..distinctly British localisation, similar to Xenoblade Chronicles or Dragon Quest VIII. While its something I can chuckle about being from Scotland, North American or gamers elsewhere might not get some of the nuances. It hopefully shouldn't be too confusing or anything of a barrier.
The game looks like it could have been the next Studio Ghibli film, with some really interesting character design and high production values. I just hope the game "gels" well together. It looks like the characters in the above picture have completely different styles and looks, almost different artstyles as well. It could end up being quite a fragmented final product, so hopefully it works, but from what I have seen in the demo, it looks to be good.
A couple other links for info and impressions on Ni No Kuni so far;
http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/06/10-thoughts-on-the-ni-no-kuni-wrath-of-the-white-witch-demo-sony-playstation-3/
http://zeboyd.com/2012/12/06/ni-no-kuni-demo-impressions/
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Recent Purchases #5 ~ Paycheck get!
Bleurgh, I've not posted in more than a month. Bad times... Well, to be more accurate, busy times...the aforementioned full time job has been taking a lot of my time up, as well as watching the London 2012 Olympics over the past two weeks when we had nothing else to watch in the evenings, or on my days off. There was some pretty amazing talent over the course of the tournament. Yeah its a bit cheesy to say, but I can see why it would "inspire a generation" like the motto says. Myself, I'm too lazy or old to try and take up a sport at this point I think, but some of the sports do look like they would be cool to do on a kind of casual basis at a university club, like fencing or swimming or something. Anyway, I am rambling a fair bit. So before I move on, well done to all the medal winners and people who devoted themselves to training for the Olympics (I'm sure a lot of them read my blog, lol... -_- aaanyways..)
Games are really annoying me at the moment though...Persona 3 FES has really been frustrating me... I'm near the start of the game (lv11, but up to the 25 Floor boss of 3 Crying Tables) so I can either grind on the
weakest enemies at the very start or the strong enemies of Block 2. I'm right in the middle, so that makes it difficult to grind against either option. Either get 1-3 exp for each battle against the weak mobs or fight really risky strong enemies. I've tried to grind against the stronger enemies, and have made good progress each time towards a level up, but then get wiped out by them exploiting my weaknesses or spamming Mudo and lose all the progress I made. I can't find good guides online either...they usually are designed for people who want to 100% the game. I just need some tips for the early game...if anyone reading has any good advice, lemme know please! I'd really appreciate it, because I'm so close to shelving this game.
Fire Emblem, which I started up so I had a portable game for a weekend where we drove down to Ayrshire for a wedding, has been really good fun and quite addictive, but the difficulty has suddenly upped at the chapter I'm at, a huge battle where I control 2 seperate groups of characters. Really simple at first, in fact, worryingly so, but they gradually tack on more little bits of strategy goodness to the battle system as you go through the first 5 or 10 chapters (yeah, there are a LOT of chapters in this game from what I read.)
I described this game as a really nice blend of Final Fantasy Tactics and Berserk (at least the manga.) Its a kind of (dark) fantasy epic with a lot of political intrigue, history and depth to the story and world. Very highly recommended from what I've seen so far. Persona 3 is good as well, but its shortcomings and difficulty have kind of dissapointed me so far...and I really wasn't expecting that from a game that comes so highly praised.
So my job has been taking a lot of my time...37.5 hrs per week to be precise (saying it like that, it doesn't sound like that much, but it has felt like a larger toll-its been really way too warm in the optician's departments, no proper aircon or windows means the air just collects and gets really stuffy) On the plus side, I've been gaining lots of experience for when I go back to uni to study my 3rd year of Optometry, and money! Lots of monies....
At first I didn't really spend much of my paycheck as I was figuring out what I should prioritise, maybe rare games I couldn't afford before, video game artbooks (an expensive niche collector's piece) or new systems like the NES or SNES I missed out on when I was younger ¬_¬ So I've kind of decided to pick up some more art books for games or series I like. At the moment I'm playing Persona 3 FES (and getting my ass kicked, as this is my first playthrough) and a bit of Disgaea 3 and since I really like the character designs and aesthetics of the games, I picked up a couple books for them.
DISGAEArt!!!
Reviews:
http://www.otakustudy.com/2012/08/disgaeart-disgaea-official-illustration-collection-review/
http://parkablogs.com/content/book-review-disgaeart-disgaea-official-illustration-collection
Shigenori Soejima SC
Reviews:
http://parkablogs.com/node/8318
http://www.nattoli.net/entry/195/shigenori-soejima-shigenori-soejima-art-works-2004-2010
Persona 3 Visual Works
Reviews:
http://www.otakustudy.com/2012/06/persona-3-official-design-works-review/
Shadow Hearts (PS2)
I saw this one for £20 in a preowned shop that sells dvds, electronics stuff, gadgets and games. In fact its the only place that still has a decent selection of PS2, Gamecube and Xbox games onwards. This game is really getting quite rare now, at least in PAL regions, so after checking on my girlfriend's phone (I have no smartphone with free access to the internet on the go) to see if 20 was a good price, I decided to pick this up after hearing a lot of good stuff about this series. Walking out the shop, I checked the box to see what the condition was like to find it had no manual with it. Bah...maybe 20 wasnt such a good price, but I'm not one of those collectors who has to have things complete all of the time. If I see a loose manual show up on ebay, I may buy it, but I'm not hugely bothered really. Anyway, the game is a really interesting looking RPG. I played like 10 minutes before realising the time was getting pretty late. It has a dark, horror aesthetic to it. Lots of cutscenes, which are in that early PS2 era 3D style (which I'm not very keen on, it should be said) but its good to see a game which intersperses lots of cutscenes in with dialogue and fast moving scenes.
I figure I should include a wee section at the bottom for stuff I've recently preordered since Amazon has so much stuff I usually preorder months in advance and end up forgetting about... My wallet hates me for it but whatever =p
Ni No Kuni: Wizards Edition
- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ni-No-Kuni-Wizards-Edition/dp/B008MLSNOY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345032535&sr=8-1
This one is currently sitting at £69.99, a fairly high price, and that will actually make it one of the most expensive games I've bought at launch, so hopefully the price drops a bit on this one before its release next year in January. Then again, I'll probably have a little bit of Christmas money to put towards it if need be. I'm really stoked for this game, even though it sold pretty badly in Japan from what I remember. Studio Ghibli/Level-5 Dragon Quest-esque role playing game, sign me up!
Tales of Graces f: Day One Edition
- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tales-Graces-Special-Day-Edition/dp/B007X13MJ0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345101548&sr=8-1
I actually preordered Tales of Graces f way before Namco Bandai had mentioned this set for day one releases, so was really happy to hear about it. You do look like you get a lot for your money, but it does look like standard collectors edition stuff. Then again, it has an artbook, which I'm always keen to get more of =) I've played the japanese demo of Tales of Graces f and it looks actually amazing, with the graphical style and the battles moving really quickly. Hopefully I'll like this game (and hopefully we get something similar for when Xillia comes out in PAL regions.)
The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy Boxed Set
This is currently sitting at £55.65, which is around about 50% of the RRP. I'd definitely recommend preordering it as early as possible if you are interested so you can save as much as possible.
- http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/14-856/The-Sky-The-Art-of-Final-Fantasy-Boxed-Set
- http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sky-Final-Fantasy-Boxed/dp/1616550392/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345031948&sr=8-1
This is a REALLY nice set of 3 of 4 (which, I admit, I don't know much about at the moment) artbooks from Yoshitaka Amano, who has done a lot of art for the Final Fantasy games. I've never been a massive fan of his work, well...to be more accurate, I like his stuff, but some of it seems creepy and awkward, almost otherworldly. I think that is the point, but something about is a bit too discordant (is that the right word) at times. Its really kind of interesting though, and hopefully taking a punt and buying this artbook set will convert me to a fan of Amano =p It looks like a really good set for the money.
I've been writing this post for days, so I should probably just publish it now I reckon.... I hope I don't go through my paycheck too quickly lol...
Games are really annoying me at the moment though...Persona 3 FES has really been frustrating me... I'm near the start of the game (lv11, but up to the 25 Floor boss of 3 Crying Tables) so I can either grind on the
weakest enemies at the very start or the strong enemies of Block 2. I'm right in the middle, so that makes it difficult to grind against either option. Either get 1-3 exp for each battle against the weak mobs or fight really risky strong enemies. I've tried to grind against the stronger enemies, and have made good progress each time towards a level up, but then get wiped out by them exploiting my weaknesses or spamming Mudo and lose all the progress I made. I can't find good guides online either...they usually are designed for people who want to 100% the game. I just need some tips for the early game...if anyone reading has any good advice, lemme know please! I'd really appreciate it, because I'm so close to shelving this game.
Fire Emblem, which I started up so I had a portable game for a weekend where we drove down to Ayrshire for a wedding, has been really good fun and quite addictive, but the difficulty has suddenly upped at the chapter I'm at, a huge battle where I control 2 seperate groups of characters. Really simple at first, in fact, worryingly so, but they gradually tack on more little bits of strategy goodness to the battle system as you go through the first 5 or 10 chapters (yeah, there are a LOT of chapters in this game from what I read.)
I described this game as a really nice blend of Final Fantasy Tactics and Berserk (at least the manga.) Its a kind of (dark) fantasy epic with a lot of political intrigue, history and depth to the story and world. Very highly recommended from what I've seen so far. Persona 3 is good as well, but its shortcomings and difficulty have kind of dissapointed me so far...and I really wasn't expecting that from a game that comes so highly praised.
So my job has been taking a lot of my time...37.5 hrs per week to be precise (saying it like that, it doesn't sound like that much, but it has felt like a larger toll-its been really way too warm in the optician's departments, no proper aircon or windows means the air just collects and gets really stuffy) On the plus side, I've been gaining lots of experience for when I go back to uni to study my 3rd year of Optometry, and money! Lots of monies....
At first I didn't really spend much of my paycheck as I was figuring out what I should prioritise, maybe rare games I couldn't afford before, video game artbooks (an expensive niche collector's piece) or new systems like the NES or SNES I missed out on when I was younger ¬_¬ So I've kind of decided to pick up some more art books for games or series I like. At the moment I'm playing Persona 3 FES (and getting my ass kicked, as this is my first playthrough) and a bit of Disgaea 3 and since I really like the character designs and aesthetics of the games, I picked up a couple books for them.
DISGAEArt!!!
Reviews:
http://www.otakustudy.com/2012/08/disgaeart-disgaea-official-illustration-collection-review/
http://parkablogs.com/content/book-review-disgaeart-disgaea-official-illustration-collection
Shigenori Soejima SC
Reviews:
http://parkablogs.com/node/8318
http://www.nattoli.net/entry/195/shigenori-soejima-shigenori-soejima-art-works-2004-2010
Persona 3 Visual Works
Reviews:
http://www.otakustudy.com/2012/06/persona-3-official-design-works-review/
Shadow Hearts (PS2)
I saw this one for £20 in a preowned shop that sells dvds, electronics stuff, gadgets and games. In fact its the only place that still has a decent selection of PS2, Gamecube and Xbox games onwards. This game is really getting quite rare now, at least in PAL regions, so after checking on my girlfriend's phone (I have no smartphone with free access to the internet on the go) to see if 20 was a good price, I decided to pick this up after hearing a lot of good stuff about this series. Walking out the shop, I checked the box to see what the condition was like to find it had no manual with it. Bah...maybe 20 wasnt such a good price, but I'm not one of those collectors who has to have things complete all of the time. If I see a loose manual show up on ebay, I may buy it, but I'm not hugely bothered really. Anyway, the game is a really interesting looking RPG. I played like 10 minutes before realising the time was getting pretty late. It has a dark, horror aesthetic to it. Lots of cutscenes, which are in that early PS2 era 3D style (which I'm not very keen on, it should be said) but its good to see a game which intersperses lots of cutscenes in with dialogue and fast moving scenes.
I figure I should include a wee section at the bottom for stuff I've recently preordered since Amazon has so much stuff I usually preorder months in advance and end up forgetting about... My wallet hates me for it but whatever =p
Ni No Kuni: Wizards Edition
- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ni-No-Kuni-Wizards-Edition/dp/B008MLSNOY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345032535&sr=8-1
This one is currently sitting at £69.99, a fairly high price, and that will actually make it one of the most expensive games I've bought at launch, so hopefully the price drops a bit on this one before its release next year in January. Then again, I'll probably have a little bit of Christmas money to put towards it if need be. I'm really stoked for this game, even though it sold pretty badly in Japan from what I remember. Studio Ghibli/Level-5 Dragon Quest-esque role playing game, sign me up!
Tales of Graces f: Day One Edition
- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tales-Graces-Special-Day-Edition/dp/B007X13MJ0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345101548&sr=8-1
I actually preordered Tales of Graces f way before Namco Bandai had mentioned this set for day one releases, so was really happy to hear about it. You do look like you get a lot for your money, but it does look like standard collectors edition stuff. Then again, it has an artbook, which I'm always keen to get more of =) I've played the japanese demo of Tales of Graces f and it looks actually amazing, with the graphical style and the battles moving really quickly. Hopefully I'll like this game (and hopefully we get something similar for when Xillia comes out in PAL regions.)
The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy Boxed Set
This is currently sitting at £55.65, which is around about 50% of the RRP. I'd definitely recommend preordering it as early as possible if you are interested so you can save as much as possible.
- http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/14-856/The-Sky-The-Art-of-Final-Fantasy-Boxed-Set
- http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sky-Final-Fantasy-Boxed/dp/1616550392/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345031948&sr=8-1
This is a REALLY nice set of 3 of 4 (which, I admit, I don't know much about at the moment) artbooks from Yoshitaka Amano, who has done a lot of art for the Final Fantasy games. I've never been a massive fan of his work, well...to be more accurate, I like his stuff, but some of it seems creepy and awkward, almost otherworldly. I think that is the point, but something about is a bit too discordant (is that the right word) at times. Its really kind of interesting though, and hopefully taking a punt and buying this artbook set will convert me to a fan of Amano =p It looks like a really good set for the money.
I've been writing this post for days, so I should probably just publish it now I reckon.... I hope I don't go through my paycheck too quickly lol...
Friday, May 4, 2012
Final Fantasy XIII-2 Impressions
I know I'm way behind on playing this but I didn't get a chance to pick it up until fairly recently. So now that I've finished my exams for my 2nd year of uni, thought I'd play through it and see what I thought. I didn't really like Final Fantasy XIII, but somehow ended up playing it for about 140 hours...think I was just trying to platinum it so I wouldn't have to go back to it. I got all but the Treasure Hunter trophy and gave up because it was too much to keep track of, and fighting the Tortoises was getting on my nerves.
So this game makes a lot of changes, some I appreciate and some I don't really. These are my impressions of the first 10 hours or so of the game. Ok bear in mind that there will be some spoilers here, so you've been warned! =p
- Graphically it is awesome, with some really over the top cut scenes (from what I can remember, they are more interesting than FFXIII
- Design wise, the areas don't seem as interesting or creative as the ones in FFXIII did. Lake Bresha in FFXIII had that wow factor - a crystalline lakeside is a lot more interesting than the areas I've been to so far in this game.
- The addition of the monster taming for me adds a lot to the game. I've spent a good chunk of my play time going back and getting some of the monsters I missed. It adds a lot to the possibilities for your team, but I wish you could have a smidge more freedom (for example, having 2 monsters on your team, or more than one human teammate.) For some of the bosses it seems you really need to go back and farm for some of the rarer monsters, which kind of seems dissapointing. You shouldn't have to have a 10% monster for your team. Arguably you could just level up whatever you have, but something seems slightly off with the system. I like the addition of the monster system, however, I've found a lot of them are recycled or slightly modified from the first game, Final Fantasy XIII.
- The characters (there haven't been too many so far) have been fairly bland (but I get the feeling Noel's back story will be explained in one big twist at some point.) I'm also not entirely convinced by the character's reactions to the plot points. Its just so ridiculous the stuff that they are doing, and they seem to never bat an eyelid. I suppose I am taking it too seriously though... For example, I found the fact that Serah and Snow have been apart so long and then barely talk once they finally do meet up to be kind of strange to say the least.
- The addition of sidequests is fairly good, but there have only been a handful so far, and I just got onto Episode 3. That, and a handful of other stuff to do does make an improvement on FFXIII.
- The battles are fun (although jamming the x button for the most part does get a bit boring.)
- I've heard a lot of praise for the soundtrack but it hasn't really caught my attention yet. It has a lot of jarring unusual pieces which I'm sitting there through thinking "what were they thinking?" The Persona 3 and 4 soundtracks by Shōji Meguro were no doubt on their minds when they were making the FFXIII-2 OST.
- Changes to the Crystarium are a bit confusing and not particularly well explained.. So for a while (up until Episode 2 or so) I didn't even use it as they hadn't told me how to. Perhaps this was because in the first game people felt too limited by the slow spoon feeding to the players, but I could've used at least a hint. After pressing x a couple times and putting a few levels into different roles, I got used to it a bit more. It feels easier to go astray and level up your character wrongly. I felt like that when I hit the first roadblock boss (Caius in Oerba.)
- Really confusing time travel story. They overuse phrases like paradox almost as much as the Kingdom Hearts games overuse phrases like heart and darkness. They don't seem to care about the knock on effects of dabbling in the past, future and alternative timelines. And man, they don't do a good job of explaining what is going on, or just how things can be changed, even with the addition of the rather weird "previously on Final Fantasy XIII-2" when you load the game.
So the game has its good points and bad points. It definitely feels less linear and limited than Final Fantasy XIII, however I think it has a convoluted, confusing story and lacks a bit of polish and attention to things here and there. I'll definitely finish the story so I can fully review the game, and theres a chance I'm going to put a lot of time into the game trying to get all of the monsters (or platinum it depending on how long it takes.)
Hopefully this doesn't too negative, but there has been a fair bit that has annoyed me even though it seems a good game so far. Hopefully it helps people still on the fence about picking it up as well.
So this game makes a lot of changes, some I appreciate and some I don't really. These are my impressions of the first 10 hours or so of the game. Ok bear in mind that there will be some spoilers here, so you've been warned! =p
- Graphically it is awesome, with some really over the top cut scenes (from what I can remember, they are more interesting than FFXIII
- Design wise, the areas don't seem as interesting or creative as the ones in FFXIII did. Lake Bresha in FFXIII had that wow factor - a crystalline lakeside is a lot more interesting than the areas I've been to so far in this game.
- The addition of the monster taming for me adds a lot to the game. I've spent a good chunk of my play time going back and getting some of the monsters I missed. It adds a lot to the possibilities for your team, but I wish you could have a smidge more freedom (for example, having 2 monsters on your team, or more than one human teammate.) For some of the bosses it seems you really need to go back and farm for some of the rarer monsters, which kind of seems dissapointing. You shouldn't have to have a 10% monster for your team. Arguably you could just level up whatever you have, but something seems slightly off with the system. I like the addition of the monster system, however, I've found a lot of them are recycled or slightly modified from the first game, Final Fantasy XIII.
- The characters (there haven't been too many so far) have been fairly bland (but I get the feeling Noel's back story will be explained in one big twist at some point.) I'm also not entirely convinced by the character's reactions to the plot points. Its just so ridiculous the stuff that they are doing, and they seem to never bat an eyelid. I suppose I am taking it too seriously though... For example, I found the fact that Serah and Snow have been apart so long and then barely talk once they finally do meet up to be kind of strange to say the least.
- The addition of sidequests is fairly good, but there have only been a handful so far, and I just got onto Episode 3. That, and a handful of other stuff to do does make an improvement on FFXIII.
- The battles are fun (although jamming the x button for the most part does get a bit boring.)
- I've heard a lot of praise for the soundtrack but it hasn't really caught my attention yet. It has a lot of jarring unusual pieces which I'm sitting there through thinking "what were they thinking?" The Persona 3 and 4 soundtracks by Shōji Meguro were no doubt on their minds when they were making the FFXIII-2 OST.
- Changes to the Crystarium are a bit confusing and not particularly well explained.. So for a while (up until Episode 2 or so) I didn't even use it as they hadn't told me how to. Perhaps this was because in the first game people felt too limited by the slow spoon feeding to the players, but I could've used at least a hint. After pressing x a couple times and putting a few levels into different roles, I got used to it a bit more. It feels easier to go astray and level up your character wrongly. I felt like that when I hit the first roadblock boss (Caius in Oerba.)
- Really confusing time travel story. They overuse phrases like paradox almost as much as the Kingdom Hearts games overuse phrases like heart and darkness. They don't seem to care about the knock on effects of dabbling in the past, future and alternative timelines. And man, they don't do a good job of explaining what is going on, or just how things can be changed, even with the addition of the rather weird "previously on Final Fantasy XIII-2" when you load the game.
So the game has its good points and bad points. It definitely feels less linear and limited than Final Fantasy XIII, however I think it has a convoluted, confusing story and lacks a bit of polish and attention to things here and there. I'll definitely finish the story so I can fully review the game, and theres a chance I'm going to put a lot of time into the game trying to get all of the monsters (or platinum it depending on how long it takes.)
Hopefully this doesn't too negative, but there has been a fair bit that has annoyed me even though it seems a good game so far. Hopefully it helps people still on the fence about picking it up as well.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Recent Purchases #4.5 Photo ver.
As you can see, I like my RPGs...this is why I have such a big backlog
of games. They are really awesome as a genre, but they often require a
significant amount of time to get through and finish. I did a couple of
these posts back a while ago, and this is more in the territory of
youtubers, but thought I'd do a little post with some of the stuff
I've picked up over the past few weeks.
I went back home the other week and ended up getting to see all the stuff that had arrived in the mail for me, some of which was preordered, some of which was traded for, and a couple of these things I got were just from looking round town for games. So I picked up all of this stuff over the past couple months (maybe this is why I don't have much money...)
Final Fantasy XIII-2 and preorder DLC, steelbook and stuff (PS3) - Got these off ebay for a pretty decent price for a game that recently came out. The preorder stuff was selling on ebay for around £10-12, so I got the game and the preorder stuff in the same auction for around £22 including shipping. I think it went unnoticed because the seller worded things a bit weirdly. Good for me I suppose! =D
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (PS2)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (PS2)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (PS2)
I remember playing through these games back when they first came out and having a lot of fun with them, especially in multiplayer. So, when having a look round one of the second hand electronics shops in the UK, CEX, I found all 3 of them for £5 preowned and decided to give them a shot again =p
La Pucelle: Tactics (PS2) - Got this in a trade along with Tales of the World from a friend in NZ. Thanks very much if you read this! =D I was thinking I'd start collecting the NIS RPGs other than the Disgaea games (which are awesome for the record.)
Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology (PSP) - I've not heard brilliant things about this game, but I wanted it for my Tales collection, and it looks like a big departure from the Tales formula, so I'm interested to try it out soon.
The Last Story (Wii) - I reckon this has the best cover art to it out of the three Rainfall titles. £38 for this one. Its got some really good reviews since it came out fairly recently. I am a big fan of Mistwalker and Lost Odyssey was one of my favourite games this generation, so hopefully I'll enjoy this. It looks a lot more forward thinking than LO somehow.
Pandora's Tower (Wii) - the third of the Operation Rainfall RPGs to come out in the UK, completing the set. Very happy to finally get all three. The black Wii box for this game and the art are just awesome. Even though it cost me goddamn £36 from Amazon. I suppoooose its cheaper than what PS3/360 titles would retail for at launch.
Hopefully this wasn't too inane or boring to read... I'll try and update some more meaningful content as my exams go on (and I look around desperately for more methods of procrastination.)
Apologies for all the unneccesary pictures I updated the post with. I figured I might as well because I had them on my computer. I might tone down the size of them if it makes the post look stupid and the text harder to find...
I went back home the other week and ended up getting to see all the stuff that had arrived in the mail for me, some of which was preordered, some of which was traded for, and a couple of these things I got were just from looking round town for games. So I picked up all of this stuff over the past couple months (maybe this is why I don't have much money...)
Final Fantasy XIII-2 and preorder DLC, steelbook and stuff (PS3) - Got these off ebay for a pretty decent price for a game that recently came out. The preorder stuff was selling on ebay for around £10-12, so I got the game and the preorder stuff in the same auction for around £22 including shipping. I think it went unnoticed because the seller worded things a bit weirdly. Good for me I suppose! =D
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (PS2)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (PS2)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (PS2)
I remember playing through these games back when they first came out and having a lot of fun with them, especially in multiplayer. So, when having a look round one of the second hand electronics shops in the UK, CEX, I found all 3 of them for £5 preowned and decided to give them a shot again =p
La Pucelle: Tactics (PS2) - Got this in a trade along with Tales of the World from a friend in NZ. Thanks very much if you read this! =D I was thinking I'd start collecting the NIS RPGs other than the Disgaea games (which are awesome for the record.)
Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology (PSP) - I've not heard brilliant things about this game, but I wanted it for my Tales collection, and it looks like a big departure from the Tales formula, so I'm interested to try it out soon.
The Last Story (Wii) - I reckon this has the best cover art to it out of the three Rainfall titles. £38 for this one. Its got some really good reviews since it came out fairly recently. I am a big fan of Mistwalker and Lost Odyssey was one of my favourite games this generation, so hopefully I'll enjoy this. It looks a lot more forward thinking than LO somehow.
Pandora's Tower (Wii) - the third of the Operation Rainfall RPGs to come out in the UK, completing the set. Very happy to finally get all three. The black Wii box for this game and the art are just awesome. Even though it cost me goddamn £36 from Amazon. I suppoooose its cheaper than what PS3/360 titles would retail for at launch.
Hopefully this wasn't too inane or boring to read... I'll try and update some more meaningful content as my exams go on (and I look around desperately for more methods of procrastination.)
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
February-March releases
How are you people getting on with the current onslaught of videogame releases? Hyped for the Vita? Coping fine? Getting close to testing the bounds of your overdrafts like me? Anyway, I hope you've been doing well since I last posted (and promised to do a Vita post... sorry for the lack thereof)
We're kind of midway(or almost) through this really busy window of game releases and I've only picked up one so far to try and save some money. Note that some of these might be slightly different for North America. I'll post dates of the noteable titles if I can find them.
February
3rd February
Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3/360) This really interests me despite how much I hated XIII...
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (IOS)
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (PS3/360)
Soul Calibur 5 (PS3/360)
10th February
Catherine (PS3/360)
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PS3/360/PC)
The Darkness II (PS3/360)
12th February
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PC)
16th February
Alan Wake (PC) It kinda sucks how long some games take to get the PC treatment sometimes...
22nd February (Oh god, the sound of bank balances screaming in unison as the Vita releases)
Vita Stuff- First-Party games:
Uncharted: Golden Abyss - €49.99/£44.99/$69.95 AUD/$89.95 NZD
ModNation Racers: Road Trip - €39.99/£34.99/$54.95 AUD/$69.95 NZD
Everybody's Golf - €39.99/£34.99/$54.95 AUD/$69.95 NZD
WipEout 2048 - €39.99/£34.99/$54.95 AUD/$69.95 NZD
Unit 13 - €39.99/£34.99/$54.95 AUD/$69.95 NZD
Little Deviants - €29.99/£24.99/$39.95 AUD/$54.95 NZD
Reality Fighters - €29.99/£24.99/$39.95 AUD/$54.95 NZD
Memory Cards:
4Gb Memory Card - €19.99/£17.99/$26.95 AUD/$34.95 NZD
8Gb Memory Card - €34.99/£31.99/$44.95 AUD/$59.95 NZD
16Gb Memory Card - €49.99/£44.99/$64.95 AUD/$84.95 NZD
Peripherals:
AC adaptor - €9.99/£8.99/$12.95 AUD/$16.95 NZD
Portable charger - €49.99/£44.99/$64.95 AUD/$84.95 NZD
USB cable - €9.99/£8.99/$12.95 AUD/$16.95 NZD
In-ear headset - €19.99/£17.99/$26.95 AUD/$34.95 NZD
Starter kit - €24.99/ £21.99/$34.95 AUD/$44.95 NZD
Travel kit - €29.99/ £25.99/$39.95 AUD/$49.95 NZD
[From Link]
And some other ones(some of which I'm not sure if they will be out at launch);
[From Link]
24th February
The Last Story (Wii) This is the only one so far that I've preordered out of these games.
Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk.2 (PS3)
Syndicate (PS3/360)
Binary Domain (PS3/360)
8th March
Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D (3DS)
9th March
Mass Effect 3 (PS3/360/PC) Will be awesome, perhaps minus the multiplayer...
Asura's Wrath (PS3/360)
Street Fighter x Tekken (PS3/360)
13th March
Silent Hill Downpour (PS3/360) I'm wanting to get into this franchise but I'm a wuss...
14th March
Journey (PS3) Interesting looking game from the developers of Flower.
16th March (Should be renamed Bit. Trip Day!)
Bit. Trip Complete (Wii)
Bit. Trip Saga (3DS)
Rayman Origins (3DS) Way later than this should have come out, is this date right?
Yakuza: Dead Souls (PS3)
22nd March
Angry Birds Space (IOS) A few more million copies to be sold?
23rd March
Armored Core 5 (PS3/360)
Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS) Should really have been a launch title...or earlier in the year IMO
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (PS3/360)
Ninja Gaiden 3 (PS3/360) Don't know much about NG other than they like to release the same games
[Used info from Link]
There are a lot more, like Diablo III, Akai Katana and many others that I didn't include, so hopefully this is slightly helpful in keeping track of things...
We're kind of midway(or almost) through this really busy window of game releases and I've only picked up one so far to try and save some money. Note that some of these might be slightly different for North America. I'll post dates of the noteable titles if I can find them.
February
3rd February
Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3/360) This really interests me despite how much I hated XIII...
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (IOS)
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (PS3/360)
Soul Calibur 5 (PS3/360)
10th February
Catherine (PS3/360)
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PS3/360/PC)
The Darkness II (PS3/360)
12th February
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PC)
16th February
Alan Wake (PC) It kinda sucks how long some games take to get the PC treatment sometimes...
22nd February (Oh god, the sound of bank balances screaming in unison as the Vita releases)
Vita Stuff- First-Party games:
Uncharted: Golden Abyss - €49.99/£44.99/$69.95 AUD/$89.95 NZD
ModNation Racers: Road Trip - €39.99/£34.99/$54.95 AUD/$69.95 NZD
Everybody's Golf - €39.99/£34.99/$54.95 AUD/$69.95 NZD
WipEout 2048 - €39.99/£34.99/$54.95 AUD/$69.95 NZD
Unit 13 - €39.99/£34.99/$54.95 AUD/$69.95 NZD
Little Deviants - €29.99/£24.99/$39.95 AUD/$54.95 NZD
Reality Fighters - €29.99/£24.99/$39.95 AUD/$54.95 NZD
Memory Cards:
4Gb Memory Card - €19.99/£17.99/$26.95 AUD/$34.95 NZD
8Gb Memory Card - €34.99/£31.99/$44.95 AUD/$59.95 NZD
16Gb Memory Card - €49.99/£44.99/$64.95 AUD/$84.95 NZD
Peripherals:
AC adaptor - €9.99/£8.99/$12.95 AUD/$16.95 NZD
Portable charger - €49.99/£44.99/$64.95 AUD/$84.95 NZD
USB cable - €9.99/£8.99/$12.95 AUD/$16.95 NZD
In-ear headset - €19.99/£17.99/$26.95 AUD/$34.95 NZD
Starter kit - €24.99/ £21.99/$34.95 AUD/$44.95 NZD
Travel kit - €29.99/ £25.99/$39.95 AUD/$49.95 NZD
[From Link]
And some other ones(some of which I'm not sure if they will be out at launch);
- Everybody’s Golf
- Escape Plan
- Gravity Rush
- Hustle Kings
- MotorStorm RC
- Top Darts
- Super StarDust Delta
24th February
The Last Story (Wii) This is the only one so far that I've preordered out of these games.
Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk.2 (PS3)
Syndicate (PS3/360)
Binary Domain (PS3/360)
8th March
Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D (3DS)
9th March
Mass Effect 3 (PS3/360/PC) Will be awesome, perhaps minus the multiplayer...
Asura's Wrath (PS3/360)
Street Fighter x Tekken (PS3/360)
13th March
Silent Hill Downpour (PS3/360) I'm wanting to get into this franchise but I'm a wuss...
14th March
Journey (PS3) Interesting looking game from the developers of Flower.
16th March (Should be renamed Bit. Trip Day!)
Bit. Trip Complete (Wii)
Bit. Trip Saga (3DS)
Rayman Origins (3DS) Way later than this should have come out, is this date right?
Yakuza: Dead Souls (PS3)
22nd March
Angry Birds Space (IOS) A few more million copies to be sold?
23rd March
Armored Core 5 (PS3/360)
Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS) Should really have been a launch title...or earlier in the year IMO
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (PS3/360)
Ninja Gaiden 3 (PS3/360) Don't know much about NG other than they like to release the same games
[Used info from Link]
There are a lot more, like Diablo III, Akai Katana and many others that I didn't include, so hopefully this is slightly helpful in keeping track of things...
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Now Playing - "Hey granny, give me some miso."
Its been ages since I did one of these posts, well kind of...I did a bit of a massive recap as to what I've been playing recently in the last post...Anyways, I've been playing some games in between uni and other stuff. Actually, I've not done much more for uni other than the lectures and labs in the first week. I have a day off this year(Tuesdays), but apart from that and Wednesdays, its quite a busy timetable. So I've managed to procrastinate to a satisfactory level so far, at least in terms of games... =p
My laptop charger broke for my laptop a few days before Christmas. Either my dad is psychic and knew that was going to happen, or it was his need to buy uneccessary new gadgets every christmas. Either way, him and my mum got me a laptop for Christmas, which I am still trying to get used to. The touchpad is a bit annoying, as it will often jump if I am typing and touch it, highlighting words I've typed, so what happens is I either start typing a few paragraphs back or just deleting huge chunks of text. So thats a bit annoying. Its also managed to crash and blue screen a few times.. I don't think its the greatest laptop ever, but its new and shiny =) I still want to pick up a replacement charger for my old laptop as it has a lot of files on it with my uni stuff, bookmarks, music, save games for some of my steam games and a few other things I could use. Well I'd rather have access to them than not. Then again, money is a bit of an issue...I need to somehow ration my money at the moment, eating frugally and all that, purchase a few of the games that come out in the February-March onslaught (I'm going to figure out what ones need to be bought that won't be available in shops after launch or the ones that will go up in price hugely.), and save enough money for presents around the time as well. I could really use a job.
So the things I'd really want to get if I have the money: I don't think The Last Story (PAL special edition) will be able to wait. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 might be a good pickup, but might go cheaper on ebay over time, like I'm hoping to do with Radiant Historia... Also I'll have to get Tales of Graces f whenever that comes out in Europe. Tales of the Abyss didn't even come out in shops so I don't want to risk not being able to find it...
Games that will have to wait (and there are some excellent looking games here..) Final Fantasy XIII-2, Mass Effect 3 (really would like to pick this up if I can)
The February-March slew of games releases has started and it looks like I'n going to have to wait a bit to play FFXIII-2, hopefully I'll be able to pick some games up when they drop in price a little bit.
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After finishing off Tales of Phantasia a few weeks back (around the 20th of December that I finished that one...I only remember because it was my last day of Semester A, and I had a dentist appointment the same day) I started up Tales of the Abyss (3DS) and played it for a few weeks, putting in just over 60 hours to finish the main story. I found the characters a little annoying at times. Perhaps the main character annoyed me at first, but he really grew on me with time. He had some lines where it actually made me burst out laughing, just from how obscenely impolite, brash and arrogant he is. The story went through quite a strange turn at some point (I'm being deliberately vague, as many people may not want it spoiled) and this lead to the group of characters becoming a bit seperated and essentially abandoning the main character. As comrades, they are all ridiculously secretive and ready to drop each other at the slightest thing. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with the way the story went, it takes a few twists and turns before turning out quite nicely. Graphically, it doesn't seem like they have done much with the game though, it looks nice for sure, but it doesn't seem to change much from the original PS2 game. Thats the same with a lot of aspects. It doesn't really include the 3D element to a great extent or put more in in terms of additions. So it remains a pretty solid, but not that different, port of the PS2 RPG. So it comes recommended if you can find a copy of this game. It didn't really seem to come out in shops anywhere on the UK high street. So I really hope online sales are good and Namco Bandai decide to bring more Tales games like Graces f and Xillia our way.
Actually, after playing this and finishing it, I started up a new game+ as I really like the way newer Tales games use the grade shop so you can buy bonuses for the next playthrough and always wanted to try it. And it seems I will do some more of this game now. After going back to uni and having Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (PSP) take up a lot of my time, I think I'll be playing some more 3DS. I signed up for a 4th year Optometry student's dissertation project. They were looking for volunteers to assess any deterioration or improvement to the binocular vision system's ability to fuse images and perceive 3D stereoscopic images after using the 3DS for an hour per week. I was quite interested in the sound of the project (being an Optom student myself, and owning a 3DS) and to see the outcome of their study if I can in the end. So I'll be playing Tales of the Abyss (3DS) in the 2D mode (as part of the control group) for a new game+ run. He did mention that since me and my friend had 3DS's, we should use our own and since we were quite big gamers, our fusion was quite good already. My friend Kris was nearly off the chart using a prism bar test to assess his brain's ability to fuse double vision(diplopia) together. Damn kids and their young eyes... If you are interested more in the study I'm taking part in, feel free to email me or comment below. I don't think I've explained things too well in the post here.
Over the Christmas break I played a lot of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS3) with my girlfriend (who I must thank for getting me Skyrim!) and got through the main story eventually. Its really an amazing, enthralling game at times. There are a few faults I found that kind of detracted from my experience. Perhaps playing on the PS3 was not the best choice, but I heard that both console releases were (equally?) buggy and glitchy. Sometimes it will lead to hilarious glitching out objects in the world or unusual sights such as Wooly Mammoths falling from the sky randomly.
Some of the AI isn't done too well. Companions or people travelling with you will sometimes dissapear or get confused by other NPCs, terrain, stairs (OMG Lydia, learn how to use stairs!) and other things. It just doesn't seem well polished enough for an Elder Scrolls game. I realise they HAD to get it out for that really nice release date (11.11.11) but it really could of benefited from some extra testing. Sure, it is a massive game, and play testing must be an absolute nightmare, but come on Bethesda. Nonetheless, it is a very good game, and I really enjoyed playing through it. Amazing music and some very good world building here. Definitely one of the better games to come out last year.
I started up Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (DS) after I couldn't decide what to play. I have a lot of DS and PSP games that I need to get through, and I asked my girlfriend to pick out on for me from a handful, I think which included Tales of the Abyss (NG+), Valkyrie Profile Lenneth, Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation. So I've put in about 15 or 20 hours to this game so far and I think its quite different to the other games closely related to it (IV and V namely.) I'm liking the degree of mystery and how they are not explaining things right away, building the story up slowly. Actually, the game is a little slow moving at times and I think, like with all DQ games, that can put people off. In fact I've been taking a break from this game due to my current MHP3rd obsession, and I hope to go back to this game soon before I forget too much of the story. Maybe the 3DS project I'm taking part in will make me play this after my hour-per-day sessions.
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OH! I nearly forgot completely! I was going to do a seperate post for an event I went to recently, I might leave my impressions to that post. All I'll say is that I got to play the Vita a week or two ago at a pre-launch event Sony had brought all across the UK (I think?) Stay tuned for that in the next day or two. I'll be giving mini reviews of a lot of the launch games and what I think of the system itself. =)
My laptop charger broke for my laptop a few days before Christmas. Either my dad is psychic and knew that was going to happen, or it was his need to buy uneccessary new gadgets every christmas. Either way, him and my mum got me a laptop for Christmas, which I am still trying to get used to. The touchpad is a bit annoying, as it will often jump if I am typing and touch it, highlighting words I've typed, so what happens is I either start typing a few paragraphs back or just deleting huge chunks of text. So thats a bit annoying. Its also managed to crash and blue screen a few times.. I don't think its the greatest laptop ever, but its new and shiny =) I still want to pick up a replacement charger for my old laptop as it has a lot of files on it with my uni stuff, bookmarks, music, save games for some of my steam games and a few other things I could use. Well I'd rather have access to them than not. Then again, money is a bit of an issue...I need to somehow ration my money at the moment, eating frugally and all that, purchase a few of the games that come out in the February-March onslaught (I'm going to figure out what ones need to be bought that won't be available in shops after launch or the ones that will go up in price hugely.), and save enough money for presents around the time as well. I could really use a job.
So the things I'd really want to get if I have the money: I don't think The Last Story (PAL special edition) will be able to wait. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 might be a good pickup, but might go cheaper on ebay over time, like I'm hoping to do with Radiant Historia... Also I'll have to get Tales of Graces f whenever that comes out in Europe. Tales of the Abyss didn't even come out in shops so I don't want to risk not being able to find it...
Games that will have to wait (and there are some excellent looking games here..) Final Fantasy XIII-2, Mass Effect 3 (really would like to pick this up if I can)
The February-March slew of games releases has started and it looks like I'n going to have to wait a bit to play FFXIII-2, hopefully I'll be able to pick some games up when they drop in price a little bit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After finishing off Tales of Phantasia a few weeks back (around the 20th of December that I finished that one...I only remember because it was my last day of Semester A, and I had a dentist appointment the same day) I started up Tales of the Abyss (3DS) and played it for a few weeks, putting in just over 60 hours to finish the main story. I found the characters a little annoying at times. Perhaps the main character annoyed me at first, but he really grew on me with time. He had some lines where it actually made me burst out laughing, just from how obscenely impolite, brash and arrogant he is. The story went through quite a strange turn at some point (I'm being deliberately vague, as many people may not want it spoiled) and this lead to the group of characters becoming a bit seperated and essentially abandoning the main character. As comrades, they are all ridiculously secretive and ready to drop each other at the slightest thing. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with the way the story went, it takes a few twists and turns before turning out quite nicely. Graphically, it doesn't seem like they have done much with the game though, it looks nice for sure, but it doesn't seem to change much from the original PS2 game. Thats the same with a lot of aspects. It doesn't really include the 3D element to a great extent or put more in in terms of additions. So it remains a pretty solid, but not that different, port of the PS2 RPG. So it comes recommended if you can find a copy of this game. It didn't really seem to come out in shops anywhere on the UK high street. So I really hope online sales are good and Namco Bandai decide to bring more Tales games like Graces f and Xillia our way.
Actually, after playing this and finishing it, I started up a new game+ as I really like the way newer Tales games use the grade shop so you can buy bonuses for the next playthrough and always wanted to try it. And it seems I will do some more of this game now. After going back to uni and having Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (PSP) take up a lot of my time, I think I'll be playing some more 3DS. I signed up for a 4th year Optometry student's dissertation project. They were looking for volunteers to assess any deterioration or improvement to the binocular vision system's ability to fuse images and perceive 3D stereoscopic images after using the 3DS for an hour per week. I was quite interested in the sound of the project (being an Optom student myself, and owning a 3DS) and to see the outcome of their study if I can in the end. So I'll be playing Tales of the Abyss (3DS) in the 2D mode (as part of the control group) for a new game+ run. He did mention that since me and my friend had 3DS's, we should use our own and since we were quite big gamers, our fusion was quite good already. My friend Kris was nearly off the chart using a prism bar test to assess his brain's ability to fuse double vision(diplopia) together. Damn kids and their young eyes... If you are interested more in the study I'm taking part in, feel free to email me or comment below. I don't think I've explained things too well in the post here.
Over the Christmas break I played a lot of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS3) with my girlfriend (who I must thank for getting me Skyrim!) and got through the main story eventually. Its really an amazing, enthralling game at times. There are a few faults I found that kind of detracted from my experience. Perhaps playing on the PS3 was not the best choice, but I heard that both console releases were (equally?) buggy and glitchy. Sometimes it will lead to hilarious glitching out objects in the world or unusual sights such as Wooly Mammoths falling from the sky randomly.
Some of the AI isn't done too well. Companions or people travelling with you will sometimes dissapear or get confused by other NPCs, terrain, stairs (OMG Lydia, learn how to use stairs!) and other things. It just doesn't seem well polished enough for an Elder Scrolls game. I realise they HAD to get it out for that really nice release date (11.11.11) but it really could of benefited from some extra testing. Sure, it is a massive game, and play testing must be an absolute nightmare, but come on Bethesda. Nonetheless, it is a very good game, and I really enjoyed playing through it. Amazing music and some very good world building here. Definitely one of the better games to come out last year.
I started up Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (DS) after I couldn't decide what to play. I have a lot of DS and PSP games that I need to get through, and I asked my girlfriend to pick out on for me from a handful, I think which included Tales of the Abyss (NG+), Valkyrie Profile Lenneth, Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation. So I've put in about 15 or 20 hours to this game so far and I think its quite different to the other games closely related to it (IV and V namely.) I'm liking the degree of mystery and how they are not explaining things right away, building the story up slowly. Actually, the game is a little slow moving at times and I think, like with all DQ games, that can put people off. In fact I've been taking a break from this game due to my current MHP3rd obsession, and I hope to go back to this game soon before I forget too much of the story. Maybe the 3DS project I'm taking part in will make me play this after my hour-per-day sessions.
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OH! I nearly forgot completely! I was going to do a seperate post for an event I went to recently, I might leave my impressions to that post. All I'll say is that I got to play the Vita a week or two ago at a pre-launch event Sony had brought all across the UK (I think?) Stay tuned for that in the next day or two. I'll be giving mini reviews of a lot of the launch games and what I think of the system itself. =)
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Its ALIVE!!!
Wow, I've been away from the blog for what seems like ages. I'm not ready to let the blog die yet. Time to start posting more frequently on here I think. I've been mostly busy with daily life, mostly consisting of my rather busy university schedule. I'm now in 2nd year of my Optometry course and I've just started my exams for the first semester. Pathology exam=done, Ophthalmic Materials and Introductory Diagnostic Techniques still to do at the start of the week. After that, I'm done for Christmas! =D (Well once I finish off my Christmas shopping for people)
So hopefully I'll have some time to get some posts done on here and play some of the games that have unfortunately become added to my long list of games which I have backlogged over the last few months. Some big titles in there that I picked up but didn't get a chance to play include;
Dark Souls (PS3, 360) I really, really enjoyed Demon's Souls so want to play this when I have a decent amount of time and concentration to devote to it, to really enjoy it and progress through it. Maybe over Christmas I'll get a chance to play this one. I got it on PS3 but I now realise its on the 360 as well. I kind of wonder if the community has taken to this game.
Xenoblade Chronicles (You Americans can now rejoice that it is coming to you/mutter under your breath about the high import prices you payed to import.) It seems the Wii is coming to the end of its lifetime, which is a bit unusual...I don't normally like to see consoles fade away or developers leave them alone because a newer console is on its way out as it usually means we miss out on a lot of good games. I will need to do some reading up about the Wii U (I'm still not too sure whether its a new console altogether or some kind of Wii peripheral...I watched the videos of it initially but didn't really do much investigating into what it actually is. I did a similar thing with the PS Vita, I still don't fully understand what it does and how it integrates with back compatibility and PS3 games.) Even though the Wii looks to be getting close to the end of its lifetime (it hasn't been that long has it?) there are still some good games coming out. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) got some really good praise and reviews when it came out recently. I'll only be picking that one up if I can cheaply find the special edition with the Wii Motion Plus bundled in with it (because I hate to buy peripherals and don't have that thing yet) Dragon Quest X: Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku Online or Dragon Quest X: Rise of the Five Tribes Online (Wii/Wii U) should definitely be interesting. People are finding it fashionable to hate on this one and its not even out yet. I'm optimistic about it-I had some good fun with Monster Hunter Tri recently. I mean, the devoted Capcom servers are not ideal (they kicked me off more than a few times, although I don't know how much that was down to my router being kind of far from the Wii) but they did the job. For a free online game (it had a subscription fee in Japan), it was a lot of fun and done quite well. So...after that long winded aside.. Xenoblade is one mammoth game from what I've heard, so I really want to have some time available to really enjoy it. I've only heard good things, and for me (if I'd played either), this or Skyrim would be my game of the year. I expect these 2 games to do well this year in terms of awards.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim (PS3, 360, PC) is the next one that everyone has been talking about that I've not played yet. I don't mind though (even though at every moment people have been inadvertently trying to spoil the game for me) as I've had a lot of studying to do for the past few weeks, plus I've got millions of games to play in the meantime. It will be in my possession at Christmas (Thankyou to my awesome girlfriend!) Not too sure what kind of character I'm going to play through as when I start the game up over the holidays yet. I'm thinking Dark Elf (like I normally end up going in Elder Scrolls games), Khajit or Argonian (the cats and lizard characters always look quite cool!=p)
Theres quite a lot of games that I've played through recently actually...
I finally got some games on Steam, and got my account upgraded fully. Damn steam sales finally made me give in. Despite the fact that there were so many games on sale in the Autumn sale, I only picked up the Zeboyd games double pack of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves The World. I've played through Breath of Death so far and found it pretty fun actually. Its got a lot of old school references and throwbacks. Check out my screenshots for some of the ones I noticed. Not too sure how to link to them exactly, but have a look on my profile; http://steamcommunity.com/id/berserkalucard/
I got The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D on my birthday from 'Ms Planet Hell' I suppose you could call her hehe =p So I finally got a chance to play this game again after absolutely ages! I never originally got an N64 so didn't get to play what some people have called one of the best (if not the best) games of all time. I saw it occasionally at my friend's house and on the Gamecube collection thing that had it, but was always put off by the horrific N64 graphics...They just made me really nauseous and scared. Ironically, the game was to be released when the 3DS came out and it was able to give people headaches for different reasons =p I was really impressed with the graphics they did for this version. The 3D was a lot better done than the previous 3D game I played, Monkey Ball. I think the 3DS is starting to get some decent games coming out now, its starting to become a system people are wanting to play now. Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land (or some stupid name) are two that seem good so far. I've picked up the 2nd half of the Ambassador programme games now, and there are some quite decent games thrown in there for the GBA!
I got really into the Monster Hunter games over the space of a few months (read: 500+ hours into MH: Freedom Unite) so I picked up Monster Hunter Tri after ages of deliberating (putting off buying the game). It was nowhere near as long to finish as Freedom Unite (which has the most content of the MH games to come out in English) but it does have a lot to do in the online quests. I finished that one in about 40 or 50 hours. I also found a good price for Portable 3rd shortly after Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD ver. was released so I imported the original one on psp (actually I got the best sellers edition.) and really enjoyed that. It has a really nice feel to it, the graphics are amazing for a psp game =p Jinouga is a really nicely designed flagship monster, and I'm definitely looking forward to picking up Monster Hunter 3G even though that will take me out of my current MH-free period...seriously, those games are like crack in game form XD
I was in quite a mood to play old school feeling dungeon crawling games, and I got through Etrian Odyssey and Orcs & Elves. One is huge, long and difficult (nearly went to a thats what she said moment there) and one is short and unusual. Both are really good fun though with a lot of nice quirks and throwbacks to older games, and I'm looking forward to playing more dungeon crawlers soon. Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard is in my list of games to get through, and I'm really wanting to pick up Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. It looks really tough but good in terms of gameplay and artstyle, all for a budget price on PSN.
There are a few games that have been announced for English audiences that I'm definitely looking forward to. Some I never thought would come out over here. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (PS3) has recently been announced for America and Europe (on my birthday!) Yeah, I know this is quite old news, but I've been away for ages, and I'll get to the newer stuff eventually =p
Ni no Kuni should be really good! I'm hoping that it sells well over here, as it kind of flopped when it came out in Japan. They need some kind of special edition to get people interested I reckon =p Either way, I'll pick it up to support Namco Bandai in localising similar games.
The Last Story is another one that I was pleased that it would be coming out to Europe, but I thought it wouldn't be a definite (and would somehow depend on how well Xenoblade did, even though I'm pretty sure they are in no way connected) release. Europeans have a release date for this one now, which is super good news!
Tales fans are getting quite a lot of good news as well recently. Tales of the Abyss came out here, so I picked it up but didn't start it right away like I had wanted to. I was too busy finishing off Tales of Phantasia (and studying mostly). I'll get to Tales of the Abyss soon though, I'm glad us PAL gamers got a chance to play that finally without importing. Not sure if I'll fall into that game's hater camp or appreciative camp. Tales of Graces f has a few release dates. America first and then sometime Summer 2012 for us lot in Europe. Hopefully Tales of Xillia ends up coming over, or at least Innocence R on the Vita =p
I could go on for much longer, but I'll leave it at that! My exams are looming, but that means I'll be done soon at least... =p
So hopefully I'll have some time to get some posts done on here and play some of the games that have unfortunately become added to my long list of games which I have backlogged over the last few months. Some big titles in there that I picked up but didn't get a chance to play include;
Dark Souls (PS3, 360) I really, really enjoyed Demon's Souls so want to play this when I have a decent amount of time and concentration to devote to it, to really enjoy it and progress through it. Maybe over Christmas I'll get a chance to play this one. I got it on PS3 but I now realise its on the 360 as well. I kind of wonder if the community has taken to this game.
Xenoblade Chronicles (You Americans can now rejoice that it is coming to you/mutter under your breath about the high import prices you payed to import.) It seems the Wii is coming to the end of its lifetime, which is a bit unusual...I don't normally like to see consoles fade away or developers leave them alone because a newer console is on its way out as it usually means we miss out on a lot of good games. I will need to do some reading up about the Wii U (I'm still not too sure whether its a new console altogether or some kind of Wii peripheral...I watched the videos of it initially but didn't really do much investigating into what it actually is. I did a similar thing with the PS Vita, I still don't fully understand what it does and how it integrates with back compatibility and PS3 games.) Even though the Wii looks to be getting close to the end of its lifetime (it hasn't been that long has it?) there are still some good games coming out. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) got some really good praise and reviews when it came out recently. I'll only be picking that one up if I can cheaply find the special edition with the Wii Motion Plus bundled in with it (because I hate to buy peripherals and don't have that thing yet) Dragon Quest X: Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku Online or Dragon Quest X: Rise of the Five Tribes Online (Wii/Wii U) should definitely be interesting. People are finding it fashionable to hate on this one and its not even out yet. I'm optimistic about it-I had some good fun with Monster Hunter Tri recently. I mean, the devoted Capcom servers are not ideal (they kicked me off more than a few times, although I don't know how much that was down to my router being kind of far from the Wii) but they did the job. For a free online game (it had a subscription fee in Japan), it was a lot of fun and done quite well. So...after that long winded aside.. Xenoblade is one mammoth game from what I've heard, so I really want to have some time available to really enjoy it. I've only heard good things, and for me (if I'd played either), this or Skyrim would be my game of the year. I expect these 2 games to do well this year in terms of awards.
Theres quite a lot of games that I've played through recently actually...
I finally got some games on Steam, and got my account upgraded fully. Damn steam sales finally made me give in. Despite the fact that there were so many games on sale in the Autumn sale, I only picked up the Zeboyd games double pack of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves The World. I've played through Breath of Death so far and found it pretty fun actually. Its got a lot of old school references and throwbacks. Check out my screenshots for some of the ones I noticed. Not too sure how to link to them exactly, but have a look on my profile; http://steamcommunity.com/id/berserkalucard/
I got The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D on my birthday from 'Ms Planet Hell' I suppose you could call her hehe =p So I finally got a chance to play this game again after absolutely ages! I never originally got an N64 so didn't get to play what some people have called one of the best (if not the best) games of all time. I saw it occasionally at my friend's house and on the Gamecube collection thing that had it, but was always put off by the horrific N64 graphics...They just made me really nauseous and scared. Ironically, the game was to be released when the 3DS came out and it was able to give people headaches for different reasons =p I was really impressed with the graphics they did for this version. The 3D was a lot better done than the previous 3D game I played, Monkey Ball. I think the 3DS is starting to get some decent games coming out now, its starting to become a system people are wanting to play now. Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land (or some stupid name) are two that seem good so far. I've picked up the 2nd half of the Ambassador programme games now, and there are some quite decent games thrown in there for the GBA!
I got really into the Monster Hunter games over the space of a few months (read: 500+ hours into MH: Freedom Unite) so I picked up Monster Hunter Tri after ages of deliberating (putting off buying the game). It was nowhere near as long to finish as Freedom Unite (which has the most content of the MH games to come out in English) but it does have a lot to do in the online quests. I finished that one in about 40 or 50 hours. I also found a good price for Portable 3rd shortly after Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD ver. was released so I imported the original one on psp (actually I got the best sellers edition.) and really enjoyed that. It has a really nice feel to it, the graphics are amazing for a psp game =p Jinouga is a really nicely designed flagship monster, and I'm definitely looking forward to picking up Monster Hunter 3G even though that will take me out of my current MH-free period...seriously, those games are like crack in game form XD
I was in quite a mood to play old school feeling dungeon crawling games, and I got through Etrian Odyssey and Orcs & Elves. One is huge, long and difficult (nearly went to a thats what she said moment there) and one is short and unusual. Both are really good fun though with a lot of nice quirks and throwbacks to older games, and I'm looking forward to playing more dungeon crawlers soon. Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard is in my list of games to get through, and I'm really wanting to pick up Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. It looks really tough but good in terms of gameplay and artstyle, all for a budget price on PSN.
There are a few games that have been announced for English audiences that I'm definitely looking forward to. Some I never thought would come out over here. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (PS3) has recently been announced for America and Europe (on my birthday!) Yeah, I know this is quite old news, but I've been away for ages, and I'll get to the newer stuff eventually =p
Ni no Kuni should be really good! I'm hoping that it sells well over here, as it kind of flopped when it came out in Japan. They need some kind of special edition to get people interested I reckon =p Either way, I'll pick it up to support Namco Bandai in localising similar games.
The Last Story is another one that I was pleased that it would be coming out to Europe, but I thought it wouldn't be a definite (and would somehow depend on how well Xenoblade did, even though I'm pretty sure they are in no way connected) release. Europeans have a release date for this one now, which is super good news!
Tales fans are getting quite a lot of good news as well recently. Tales of the Abyss came out here, so I picked it up but didn't start it right away like I had wanted to. I was too busy finishing off Tales of Phantasia (and studying mostly). I'll get to Tales of the Abyss soon though, I'm glad us PAL gamers got a chance to play that finally without importing. Not sure if I'll fall into that game's hater camp or appreciative camp. Tales of Graces f has a few release dates. America first and then sometime Summer 2012 for us lot in Europe. Hopefully Tales of Xillia ends up coming over, or at least Innocence R on the Vita =p
I could go on for much longer, but I'll leave it at that! My exams are looming, but that means I'll be done soon at least... =p
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