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 (I really just wanted to write that title out in full, because its a hilariously bad title), Bravely Default (demo, and then the first hour) and found it difficult to stick to a solid hour of playing the first hour of handheld games because I usually flip the ds into sleep mode when I get distracted by the tv or other stuff. So no notes materialised for either of those games, but I have been really enjoying Bravely Default as I've gone along. Its like that game was designed for gamers like me who like their JRPGs and art styles you might see in RPG artbooks.

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.

So I was really impressed by Dragon's Crown over the hour I played, and would have played a lot more if I didn't have exams to study for. But I definitely will be checking more out soon, and I recommend it to those gamers who like their 2D Dungeon Crawler/hack'n'slash RPGs or action games, those who like nicely drawn 2D games - this is probably one of the most amazing 2D games I've seen, and those who like to co-op on games like Gauntlet, as I've heard that those are along the same vein as Dragon's Crown.
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

2013 Round Up - Games of the year

So this will be the first of two posts for the end of 2013. Scary thought to think we are already at the end of the year, to me it seems like it's flown by. So I thought I'd try and wrap up the year with two posts - one which a lot of websites will be doing at the moment, their game of the year posts or videos, usually published in early January. And another post which is fitting for this transition time in the gaming 'generation', a games of the generation post, having a look at my favourite, i.e. my personal choices for the best games of the past generation (NDS, PSP, Wii, X360, PS3.)

First of all, my games of the year, and this should be a bit different to a lot of the other sites and blogs. This is mainly down to the fact that I've not had much time to play games this year, with a lot of work and crazy stuff going on in life. Its been mostly handheld games I've been playing as they are a bit more flexible and I can put little bits of time in here and there, especially when travelling on the train and things.

So my list of games that I finished are noted below as B status, and C status means 100% finished. These are from the backloggery, just pasted from my notes on there. I like to use that website to keep track of my collection and my progress in games. Quite useful if you take a long break from a game and you want to know where you left off as well. Anyway, as you can see, my selection is limited to only those games in bold, which were released in 2013, and that I finished. I don't see games that I played partially as eligible to receive any rewards or be reviewed in any informed way whatsoever. I'm also starting a new rule that I've tried to stay away from in the past on the blog. I'm going to be adding more detailed labels, with series that I mentioned in the posts, and perhaps game titles. This should hopefully make searching more easy looking through my labels for posts.

2013 Stats

Inazuma Eleven (DS)
Fire Emblem (GBA)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Steam)
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (3DS)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)
Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection (PSP)
Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS)
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (DS)
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS)
Project X Zone (3DS)
Pokemon X (3DS)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked (3DS)

So out of those games that I managed to finish, I'd narrow my favourites down to Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which I put a huge amount of time into, Pokemon X, which surpassed my expectations in a big way after the dissapointing last generation, and Fire Emblem: Awakening, which was a brilliantly polished game..although one that I've not really put much time into post game. I'll go into some more detail about the three of these games and why I think they are so well made (in their own ways)

So looking at last year's round up 3 of the games I had said I was looking forward to in 2013 actually ended up being my favourite games from 2013. Maybe I need to play more games or something...

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate 

Some people will say that the Wii U version is better because of the online multiplayer. It makes it a lot easier to get far into the G-Rank content (i.e. postgame/multiplayer stuff) but the vast majority can be done solo. It is a lot more fun to play some of the quests with friends you know in person, but I've put in over 230 hours more or less solo (just done a couple quests a long time ago near the launch of the game with a friend) and it's been really fun so far.

What I like about the setup Capcom have created for MH3U is that it's so flexible. You can play multiplayer locally with friends on a Wii U and up to 3 3DS systems (I may be wrong on that, I've not had a chance to test that out yet.) and you can move save games between 3DS and Wii U versions of the game if you want. If I eventually end up getting a Wii U I'll probably put down the money for the other version of this game and play some online coop with some other friends I've just not had a chance to see in person.

There is a huge amount of content in this game, with hundreds of items to craft and quests to work through. The only thing that puts a lot of people off is the controls. Especially when it comes to the underwater levels, they can be really fiddly to keep everything 'controlled' for lack of a better word. For this, the Circle Pad Pro or XL version is a must. They are fairly inexpensive online, but I found them really hard to find in shops (at least where I live in Scotland.)

Pokemon X

Pokemon X to me felt like a very big leap from the previous games, both graphically and in a lot of other areas. It is probably as close to the 'Pokemon MMO' that everyone wants Game Freak to come out with for the next Pokemon handheld step. The online integration is really seamless and reminds me of Demon's Souls where you can see other players who are passing by the area, you can see a list of acquaintances where you've had some interaction with (trade, battle etc) and a list of friends (people who are simply on your 3DS list.) You can interact easily with all of the people on those lists, and have mesages that pop up to talk with other players. There is a lot to the multiplayer aspects, and they've really made it so seamless to trade and battle other players. You don't have to add submarine codes for each other (well, you kind of do, but the 3DS codes are a bit easier now) or plug in awkward link cables and then make your way to a poke centre like you had to previously, you can go into multiplayer from more or less any area, in town, dungeon etc.

They've added quite a bit more depth to the gameplay with the addition of mega evolutions and the Fairy type. The last time a type was introduced was back in back in the 3rd generation with the Steel type, and in a way it comes as a breath of fresh air. Fairy types are unaffected by Dragon type moves and super effective against Dragon, so some people believe they could really change the Dragon heavy metagame. I played a lot of Pokemon X in 2013 in the first few weeks after it's October release date. About 120 hours roughly, finishing the storyline, doing some pokedex collecting, breeding and trading for competitive battles. I've got a lot more to do though, I think I left some legendaries and post game stuff as my team wasn't high enough level to safely take them on. Pokemon games are always solid choices for your Nintendo handhelds, and X and Y really give you a lot for your money. They have a lot of throwbacks to older games in the series, even back to Generation 1, and a lot of decent quality for newer players to ease into the series.

Fire Emblem: Awakening 

I put in about 70 hours to this game, and ended up finishing the main story and a lot of the side quest material, paralogues and DLC quests in about 35 hours (the rest was attempts, characters dying and reloading.) I chose to play on the 'classic' Fire Emblem mode, with Normal difficulty and this made permadeath something to consider. I don't really think you can play Fire Emblem without permadeath (where your characters die for good if they fall in battle) but it is a really good feature in this game, and one that hopefully appealed to a lot of newcomers to the series. This is such a brilliant srpg series that really needs more attention. It has a really simple gameplay mechanic at its core and really isn't too difficult or complex. Its a very good entry in the series and think that people should give it a shot if they still haven't done so. It has some niggling annoyances, and for some reason I've not gone back to it in a long time, but I hope to one day. Even though I did a playthrough on Normal, Classic, there are harder difficulties and a lot of content due to the dialogues you can get between your characters. So theres a lot for me to go back to, and its just a really well polished game, and that is why it deserves a spot on my games of the year list. Which it turns out, are all 3DS games.

First hour impressions #1

I was talking about this idea the other day. I'll be continuing my first hour impressions series of posts with a PS3 title that didn't get much attention when it released back last year a downloadable title on the PS3 in Europe and USA. I picked this one up as I had some spare credit and wanted to spend some in a sale they had on 'big in Japan' titles, or something stupid to that effect.

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 time to procrastinate from studying free time.

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.

For now, I liked what I saw of the game, but from what I remember of Cladun, this should be a fairly repetitive dungeon crawl for the most part. I was quite impressed and I would recommend the game to people who like their top down hack and slash action games or RPGs. There are a lot of games in that sub-genre at the moment, especially with the whole roguelike explosion.

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!

First hour impressions

I'm going to do a series of posts that I've been considering doing for a while, and in fact, I think I did something similar if not the same a while ago with two strategy rpgs. Or, had intended to, but never actually got around to playing the opening to one of them. Check out the link.

For this time, I'm again going to play through the first hour of certain games and see how they play. It'll just be a random choice, not using the random generator on backloggery (see Cookie Picks) but just me putting in games that I've been wanting to play and haven't got around to yet.
Its very much in the vein of First Hour, an interesting (but in some ways controversial) blog idea. They review the first hour only of games, going on the assumption that if a game doesn't drag you in or attract your attention within the first hour, they aren't going to be worth the time after that. Well, they do go into a bit more detail, but a lot of the games that really blossomed slowly get reviewed quite badly on there. Then again, they do full reviews as well, which gives games more of a chance to impress. Check out their blog at the above link. Its not very active, but has a good back catalogue of posts to read through.

Now that I've finished university for the Christmas period, I'll have access to a few more consoles. Its mostly been handhelds, specifically my 3DS that I've been playing, so I might try out a few games on home consoles or older systems perhaps.
What I'll do is I'll post these first hour impressions in seperate posts as I go along. They'll have tags and numbered titles to try and keep them together as well.
I've already played and written notes for two games (both RPGs)... so stay tuned!

Some links, videos and websites

Something a bit boring perhaps. Well, I found these interesting. Warning: spoilers for Dark Souls, Demon's Souls and The Elder Scrolls. I'm a big fan of artbooks that go into the creation of video games. When a series has really interesting lore, such as the Elder Scrolls, Diablo or Dragon Age games, I really like to read into flavour text and back story stuff when I can. Here are some interesting links. Some artbooks I'd really recommend, as well: the Diablo series Book of Cain and Book of Tyrael. For Dragon Age lore, illustrations and a lot of content, check out Dragon Age: The World of Thedas

http://www.parkablogs.com/node/8184

http://www.parkablogs.com/content/book-review-diablo-iii-book-of-tyrael

http://www.parkablogs.com/content/book-review-dragon-age-world-of-thedas-volume-1

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7pGJQV-jlzCPBUy9uAXQUXZ4UBaDLKS5 - ShoddyCast's Elder Scrolls Lore

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4825DBA198EBE9B9 - EpicNameBro's Dark Souls Lore series

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWLedd0Zw3c5RCXboUsPwHsZJlXB2CzCz - VaatiVidya's Dark Souls Lore series

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWLedd0Zw3c4z4PZRGyLh8uFMSae11ZuR - VaatiVidya's Demon's Souls Lore series

http://diablo.gamepedia.com/Lore_Summary

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAfqGThL6XtIYkUGiQzq1tqOi7pp50uZE - MisterShizno's Dragon Age Lore series

More Pokemon XY Links

Some useful links and resources for Pokemon XY Players.

http://www.gamesradar.com/pokemon-x-and-y-mega-stone-location-guide/

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/pokemon-x-and-y-post-game-what-to-do-after-youre-done

http://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/1ov1s5/pok%C3%A9mon_xy_guide_megathread/

http://www.serebii.net/xy/dailyevent.shtml

http://www.marriland.com/forums/pokemon/pokemon-challenges/439273-new-pokemon-in-game-challenges-rules-and

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/generation-6-iv-calculator.3490488/

http://www.smogon.com/forums/forums/uncharted-territory.249/ 

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/breeding-perfect-pokemon-in-pokemon-x-y.3490432/

And a few PSA on the glitches and bugs that have been noticed so far.
Version 1.1 will patch out the Lumiose city saving bug. http://www.serebiiforums.com/showthread.php?618172-Known-Glitches-in-XY
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_glitches_in_Generation_VI#Wonder_Trade_glitch
And the latest and perhaps most worrying: http://www.twinfinite.net/blog/2013/11/03/pokemon-wonder-trade-hacked-virus-appears/
http://www.kpopstarz.com/articles/47737/20131102/pokemon-x-and-y-glitch.htm
http://krissi2197.tumblr.com/post/65732594774/warning-to-all-wonder-trade-users

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page
http://serebii.net/index2.shtml
http://www.smogon.com/

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

Some links for Pokemon X and Y

Some tips for people interested in looking for shiny pokemon in X & Y. Check these out, a lot of it is continuation from previous generations. I've seen some posts on forums about the Matsuda method, but its still to be confirmed if it definitely works in the new games.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/96aa93a195b753972c0be56ce8ca26cf/tumblr_mv1yofPjNr1qb9bjho5_1280.jpg

http://kotaku.com/wanna-catch-your-pokemon-in-a-shiny-new-color-in-x-y-1450801224?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Facebook&utm_source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

Theres's also the Friend Safari, which is another new aspect that really takes off after you finish the main story. I've been going to serebii.net a lot as well, for information on the gameplay for Pokemon X, which I've really been enjoying. But it seems people are still figuring things out and a lot of the information is still incomplete.

Ghostlight still needs your help!

Ghostlight are hoping to release Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 in PAL regions, and they started a scheme similar to a kickstarter project at the start of August, stating that if they met the preorder target of 1800 by the end of August, the game would be released as a physical release for the Nintendo DS, but if they didn't meet the target, the game wouldn't be released. The project faces a lot of problems, with people potentially waiting for Break Record (which to me seems stupid..there has been nothing on the localisation of that title yet), saving up for next gen consoles and games, people focusing on 3DS or Vita as those systems slowly find their feet and then there's the people who imported or would rather just pick up an NTSC copy of DS2. There are many aspects which make this a tricky release situation...

So Ghostlight are sitting at 672/1800 preorders with about 2 weeks left to go, so they have some more work to do. Spread the word, and preorder if you are interested and want to see the gold edition see the light of day!

Nintendo So Many Games! Promotion

Nintendo of Europe are offering a free game to those who purchased any 3 of these recent Nintendo 3DS games and register them to their Club Nintendo account. Check the link here for more details: LINK
I've already managed to claim mine, which is surprising based on how niche I thought some of the games I had were. For those of you interested in which 3 I had already - MH3U, Fire Emblem and Castlevania.

Eligible Nintendo 3DS games for So Many Games! promotion

There are eight Nintendo 3DS titles in this promotion:

• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Nintendo 3DS Version)
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate
• Luigi's Mansion 2
• Fire Emblem: Awakening
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity
• Animal Crossing: New Leaf
• LEGO CITY Undercover: The Chase Begins
• Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D

MH Online

Think I'll just post this here, its too good looking =p

Nintendo Direct 14/04/13

I'm starting to really get behind Nintendo's marketing methods recently, with the roughly monthly Nintendo Direct presentations to Japan, Europe and USA showing us details about new updates, downloads, games and hardware that will be coming out to the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
It seems they really are taking some awesome moves for European and American gamers, with recent announcements like Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, Fire Emblem x SMT, Fire Emblem Awakening and a lot of series that I thought long dead seeing new releases.


Here is the latest Nintendo Direct (14/4/13)


They've made it certain for me, I'll be getting Fire Emblem Awakening at launch. I've been really interested in playing this game, and with the deals they mentioned on DLC a few months back getting more details, I'll not be able to wait any longer I don't think...

Earthbound has finally been acknowledged as something us westerners actually want, and will be coming to the Wii U e-shop. One more reason for me to get a Wii U...now to decide if I want a Wii U or a 3DS XL in the next couple months. On the fence...

Shin Megami Tensei IV will be coming to Europe! I was dreading to even think about when we would get an announcement for this for Europe, as it just came out in America. I was expecting something far off in the future for Europe, if ever. So this has really surprised me...they are getting better and better at bringing release dates closer together

Bravely Default Flying Fairy (or whatever its called) will be coming to Europe! I was really hoping for this game, and wow...the trailer was gorgeous.

There was some fairly interesting Legend of Zelda announcements, take a look at the video for some more info. I better get back to studying and stop procrastinating. Just a little post of my thoughts on the new Nintendo Direct presentation. They are being too nice to us! I'm not used to Nintendo like this =)

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.

Demon Talk

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.