Friday, January 2, 2009
Monday, July 21, 2008
Tactical and Console RPGs: List of Tactical and Console RPGs I recently procured!
Hi all, sorry about the lack of updates lately, I've been busy.
I recently got a whoooooole bunch of Tactical RPGs and Console RPGs, and I'm just going to list them here. I wanted to let everyone know what will be written about in the next while when I get around to writing more about Tactical RPGs and Console RPGs. Also, I'll list Dungeon Crawler RPGs in the same place as Console RPGs out of convenience, but I'll note that they're Dungeon Crawlers.
I recently got a whoooooole bunch of Tactical RPGs and Console RPGs, and I'm just going to list them here. I wanted to let everyone know what will be written about in the next while when I get around to writing more about Tactical RPGs and Console RPGs. Also, I'll list Dungeon Crawler RPGs in the same place as Console RPGs out of convenience, but I'll note that they're Dungeon Crawlers.
- Console RPGs
- Valkyrie Profile 2
- Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana
- Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny
- Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm
- Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis
- Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia
- Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (dungeon crawler)
- Izuna: The Legend of the Unemployed Ninja (dungeon crawler)
- Tactical RPGs
- La Pucelle: Tactics
- Makai Kingdom: Chronicles of the Sacred Tome
- Phantom Brave
- La Pucelle: Tactics
- Soul Nomad and the World Eaters
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Handheld Console RPG - Chrono Trigger
Compiled Chrono Trigger Information
Alright, so I found out more about the new Chrono Trigger. Here it is in point form.- It is a port of the original Chrono Trigger. It will not feature new graphics or music, and the storyline will play out the same way as the original.
- It will contain an extra dungeon, perhaps more.
- It will have dual screen presentation. I'm not sure what that would mean for Chrono Trigger outside of the battle menu never obscuring the action
- It may or may not be re-translated for more accurate translation. As we know, Chrono Trigger (and other SNES RPGs) have piss-poor translation, and it would be nice to get the story the way it was supposed to be presented.
- There is a countdown on the official Chrono Trigger DS Japanese Countdown site. It is an actual countdown, and it means something. We're not sure what for, but it is likely the release of the new Chrono Trigger DS trailer, or perhaps a real website for it.
I'm so excited for Chrono Trigger DS!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
NEWS - Chrono Trigger DS!
Ohhhh man. Chrono Trigger is coming out for the DS. I have no IDEA what they have in store for this... I don't know if it will be one of Square-Enix's 3d remaked or if they're making a new game. I DO know, however, that it is going to KICK ASS.
CHRONO TRIGGER DS!!!
Link to Chrono Trigger DS
Check it out.
CHRONO TRIGGER DS!!!
Link to Chrono Trigger DS
Check it out.
Console RPG - Ar Tonelico Review
Console RPG - Ar Tonelico Review
I picked this NIS game up for 20$ at my local EB Games. I'm trying to get the entire catalog of PS2 games by NIS before they become abysmally rare, so this game at 20$ was an obvious pickup for me! I'd seen videos of it and it looked pretty cool. It actually reminded me a bit of the original Valkyrie Profile (by the way, why the hell is VP2 so hard to find in stores?) I'll let you know whether or not it really is like Valkyrie Profile as I move on further into this review. I'm just going to note one thing, and that's the fact that you should not expect standard NIS fare from this game. The reason that you shouldn't is that NISA simply LOCALIZED the game, and are not the developers. This game was developed by Gust, which means that the team that worked on the game was not the NIS design team. A lot of people don't understand this basic element of how the gaming world works. It's a lot like the movie industry, actually, where there are producers and directors... Think of NIS as a Producer from a film, and Gust as the directors, and it will all make sense. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the game itself.
I'm not like most reviewers in how I weight games, by the way, as I have a different system to how I review things. I like to review games based on company strengths, and since this game was published by NIS and I don't really know Gust, I am going to weight and categorize this review by the same criteria I'd generally use for an NIS game. It works like Jeopardy, really, in that each review I make will have different categories, because I like to categorize by the strengths of companies and use those as the basis for comparison rather than comparing them to other companies' efforts. It makes no sense to compare the graphics in God of War to those in Ar Tonelico, since Ar Tonelico uses sprite-based graphics, which is one example explaining why I do what I do.
And so, in true Alex Trebeck fashion - HERE are the categories!
Gameplay - Flow
Gameplay - Battle and Equipment Systems
Gameplay - Out of Battle
Graphics
Music
Story
I work in percents, so everything will be out of 100. I weight all of the categories equally, in that each Gameplay Element will be valued as much as graphics or music. Thus, gameplay actually acounts for 50% of the total score for the game. I see games as the limitations their systems provide, and the graphics and other elements as filler, and that's the reason that Gameplay weighs in so harshly.
Gameplay - Flow
This game flows very smoothly in terms of how and where battles and story parts occur. One of the cool systems it has in place is an unnamed but omnipresent "Enemy Density" system. Essentially, an area has a certain number of enemies that will appear for random battles, and they can be annihilated until there are none left. Some areas have more random battles than others, but this system exsits all over the game and is very nice. In addition to this, the game tells you how "close" you are to a random battle. There is a green -> blue -> yellow -> orange -> red bar in the bottom right corner of the screen, and as this bar gets towards red, random battles are more likely to happen. I'm assuming this works like "green = 10%chance per step"... "red = 80%chance" or something along those lines, and it actually works very well. It makes it so you won't generally fiNISh a battle, take a step, then be in another right away - which is a problem that plagues many RPGs. Concluding this thought, I'd like to make the point that this game implements what I'd call a "semi-random" battle system, in that the system implies randomness but does not truly contain it. It's hard to wrap your mind around, and a lot of players probably won't even notice it, but it's the kind of little thing I love to see that makes games slightly more playable... it's also important because battles actually take a decent amount of time if you want to bring up your DP (which is a system I will explain soon.)
The flow of the game generally moves like this... story -> explore an area -> find areas within the region that have some more story -> perhaps fight a boss... -> repeat. It's typical RPG fare, of course. The cool thing, however, is that this game has lots of room for exploration... I find it has a much less linear design when compared to a lot of RPGs, like Final Fantasy X for example, which was so linear in its design it was sickening (though its battle system was awesome). Because of the Enemy Density system, the story flows well between the action sequences. Also, the story segments are not too long and are also not too frequent, but are not placed too far apart so the moments between the story never seem tedious.
Flow - 100%
Gameplay - Battle and Equipment Systems
This is always my real test of whether a game is awesome or not... because I really love breaking game systems if they're fun to break. This one doesn't seem so breakable, which does sort of annoy me, but despite that I enjoy unbreakable games that have interesting systems to play with, especially if they allow a decent amount of customization. Luckily, this game does have a decent amount of customization. There are two systems in play that allow for this customization.
- Grathmelding
- Enhance
Grathmelding (weird name, I know...) is pretty much a synthesis system. You take items and you stick them together and make better items... items whose strengths and weaknesses are based on the grathmeld crystals that you build the item with. There's not really much to say about it, actually, aside from that. You get cards with recipes, then you smith or mix the recipe to make the item. The system introduces flexability through the grathmeld crystal system, allowing you to create better grade items.
The real customization comes from the enhancement system. The weapons have slots in them in which you can equip crystals, levelled 1 through 4, which add abilities to your weapons. They add things like elemental damage, or extra attack power, or a plethora of other add-ons to the weapons (or armours, or accessories). You can easily customize your wespons situationally and permanently with these add-ons, as they can be added and removed at will. Interesting things can definitely be done with this system, combined with the Grathmelding system, to create very cool and customizable characters.
On to the battle system, now. At first glance, it will actually remind you of Valkyrie Profile, most likely, just because of the look and feel of it (being sprite-based helps this comparison touch base even more closely than if the game were 3D. However, it actually plays out more like the battle system from Final Fantasy X. If you remember, I mentioned before that I liked the battle system from Final Fantasy X, and I really did. It was a very well thoguht out system and I believe that with a bit of refining to make it more strategic, and better customization elements, it could have been the best FF battle systerm ever. That is essentially what the battle system in Ar Tonelico is. It is a more refined and strategic version of the Final Fantasy X battle system.
Instead of the characters being in one row, they are in three rows, and the first three block characters block the mage in the back, who is the most important character on the team (especially in boss fights) and is also one of the story drivers (you'll see what I mean when I talk about storyline.) There are a few systems that combine to make up the battle system. The turn-based system works a lot like the one in Final Fantasy X, where the characters and enemies work turn for turn with eachother, and there is a delay marker for each attack that will shift turn order around. The turn order can be manipulated by eliminating enemies before they get their turns, allowing your characters to get more attacks in before the slower enemies can do anything. This is fun and exciting, and I love it. Some people think that non-ATB systems aren't as good, but I disagree. I love having time to plan out attacks and crunch a few numbers before attacking, although in this game I sometimes dread letting battles move on too far because of a certain aspect of the battle music that annoys the hell out of me (more on the music when I get to that section.)
If I talk about every element of the battle system, this will definitely go on way too long, so I won't talk about everything, but I would like to say something about the mages in the game. The mages work in a very strange way in Ar Tonelico; they are song mages - they attack by singing - and music is one of the story-drivers of the game. Their attacks are powered up by the "harmony" system that is in the game. Harmony is being equivocated in the case of the game, where it refers to the way the characters work together (in harmony), and that translates to musical harmony in the voice of the song mage, who then uses that to strengthen their song. MP is used to cast the spells, and as the song continues, more MP is used. The song magic gains power depending on how long you let the song mage sing for, and the result can be devastating and can often one-shot enemies and bosses with thosands of damage at a time (if you build the attack up to that extent.)
All in all the battle system is very well excecuted. I have only one complaint, but it's more of a technical issue than a system issue. The battles sort of jam up here and there, in that they sometimes "skip" like a scratched DVD... where the PS2 will struggle to execute commands. You can look on Youtube for some videos and see what I mean by that. It doesn't cause any kind of problem, because there's no timing involved in the battle system (and that makes me incredibly relieved that this battle system is not ACTUALLY like Valkyrie Profile as it appeared on first glance), but it still peeves me slightly. Regardless, the system is excellent and thus...
Battle and Equipment Systems - 100%
Gameplay - Out of Battle
There are a few systems in play outside of battle. I will touch on two of them, the Talk system and the Dive system. Those are the main non-flow non-equipment elements outside of the game that are being used to drive the game. They are also connected elements, in that they both involve your song mages, and are also both story-telling devices, which make them even more interesting in how they are presented.
The talk system works similarly to the communication system in Luminous Arc. Certain things can be talked about with the Song Mages, which will get your main character (and by association, you, the player) to know the Song Mages better. It works differently from Luminous Arc, however, in that you cannot choose the conversation branches, and they are all scripted. As you get to know the characters better, a grid fills out to keep track of how close you are to your Mage. This grid determines how far into their "cosmospace" you can dive when you use the Dive system. What's the Dive system? That's up next.
The Dive system is an interesting system that they placed into the game, and is how the Song Mages gain new magic. You "dive" into their subconscious (known as their cosmospace), and walk around. It sounds weird, yes, but that's the way it is. Inside the cosmospace, you will meet the various facets of your characters, based on what depth of their subconscious you are in. You can also see simulatneous opposite versions of that character, such as Angel Aurica and Devil Aurica being on the same screen at the same time. They have dilemmas within themselves that they must solve, and in solving those dilemmas and problems, they craft magic to help work their subconsious mind out of its struggle - that magic then translates over to the real world and they can cast new spells. This system is incredibly intelligently put together, and they thought it through when making it. They realized they wanted strong character development in the game, but that too much unbroken dialogue would damage the fun factor of the game, so implemented this system in which you don't REALLY do anything other than walk around and read dialogue, but you FEEL like you're doing something because the dialogue is broken up into segments and the scenarios are always interesting. Not only that but this can generally be done at any time, in that if you get bored of it at any point you can continue the main plotline (with slightly weaker mages, but a still beatable game), and not be bored by overwhelming character development sections (that can sometimes plague games with those ENORMOUS cutscenes.)
The other clever thing about the dive system is that it works in harmony with the battle system, in that you need to build a connection in battle with your mage, as well as in their cosmospace. This makes the system a lot more believable, in that not just anyone can "dive" with a Mage, but their connection needs to be deep and the characters need to have a mutual trust. This is also a plot point in the game, the idea of trust and harmony between the Song Mages and Humans.
I can't really talk about much more without going into the story too far and spoiling things, because the OOB systems really do blend in very nicely with the story elements of the game, and all three gameplay systems work very very closely to eachother. I really find this game to have a well thought out OOB system, and combined with well executed flow, and a great battle system, the gameplay of this game is very well rounded off with another mark of ...
Out of Battle - 100%
Graphics
I have a lot less to say about this, and the following sections, as I don't find them to be particularly important in a game, though they do enhance the general feel of it. The graphics in this game are strangely executed. A lot of areas look funny and not so great, though the sprites look great - both in and out of battle. The attack animations are lacking, I find, and the spell effects could have been a lot cooler than they were. They obviously didn't have a huge budget with which to put this game together... and it does show. Keep in mind that I LOVE SPRITE BASED GRAPHICS and the great sprites get 100% from me, as they look super cool, but the other elements leave much to be desired, and thus ...
Graphics - 50% (33% of which are the Sprites, as I broke the mark down into 3 elements - Characters, Environments, and Attack Animations)
Music
I have somewhat of a bone to pick with the music in this game. A LOT of it is really really good. A LOT OF IT reminds me of Valkyrie Profile music, which is a very good thing. A LOT OF IT is really quite enjoyable, and it's also very catchy at times. It fits well into the environment, most of the time, and it never gets repetitive - even if you're in an area for a while. So what's my problem with the music? Well it's actually NOT the music in general AT ALL that I have a problem with. It's a single song. The battle song. RPG battle songs are a sacred thing to me, and you hear a lot of them in any good RPG, so they'd better be good. The one in this game IS good, until the game starts rapping at you. Yeah... it raps at you. And it's not good rap, either. It's bad rap. And it is very annoying. It ruined my experience with the song, and I actually try and end battles before it happens as often as I can (while maintaining a good level of DP from the battle, which sometimes takes a while to build up.)
Aside from that, though, the music is very good, and thus...
Music - 90%
Story
I hate giving things away, so I'll write this as one sentence. There are viruses in a tower, a knight is sent to try and find a crystal to stop the destruction of his home, things go awry, there is an evil organization that are meanies to Song Mages. This is all within the first couple of hours of the game, so I don't feel bad telling you that stuff, but I won't go any further because it would bother me. So I leave you with a score...
Story - 70%
Summary - 85%
Take note that I have not explained everything in the game in terms of systems, but this review is long enough as is. If you're not sure whether or not to buy the game, you can do one of two things to help yourself...
A) Leave a comment on my blog and I will answer any questions you post concerning the gameplay systems(my blog is located at http://beyond-tactical-rpgs.blogspot.com)
B) Read one of the faqs on http://www.gamefaqs.com to find out more about the game.
For more reviews like this, as well as advice on games, go to http://beyond-tactical-rpgs.blogspot.com - it is updated multiple times per week with articles, reviews, system breaks, and more on RPGs and Tactical RPGs.
If you have any questions about this game or any other, leave a comment on my blog, OR email me at alsburyt at gmail dot com.
I picked this NIS game up for 20$ at my local EB Games. I'm trying to get the entire catalog of PS2 games by NIS before they become abysmally rare, so this game at 20$ was an obvious pickup for me! I'd seen videos of it and it looked pretty cool. It actually reminded me a bit of the original Valkyrie Profile (by the way, why the hell is VP2 so hard to find in stores?) I'll let you know whether or not it really is like Valkyrie Profile as I move on further into this review. I'm just going to note one thing, and that's the fact that you should not expect standard NIS fare from this game. The reason that you shouldn't is that NISA simply LOCALIZED the game, and are not the developers. This game was developed by Gust, which means that the team that worked on the game was not the NIS design team. A lot of people don't understand this basic element of how the gaming world works. It's a lot like the movie industry, actually, where there are producers and directors... Think of NIS as a Producer from a film, and Gust as the directors, and it will all make sense. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the game itself.
I'm not like most reviewers in how I weight games, by the way, as I have a different system to how I review things. I like to review games based on company strengths, and since this game was published by NIS and I don't really know Gust, I am going to weight and categorize this review by the same criteria I'd generally use for an NIS game. It works like Jeopardy, really, in that each review I make will have different categories, because I like to categorize by the strengths of companies and use those as the basis for comparison rather than comparing them to other companies' efforts. It makes no sense to compare the graphics in God of War to those in Ar Tonelico, since Ar Tonelico uses sprite-based graphics, which is one example explaining why I do what I do.
And so, in true Alex Trebeck fashion - HERE are the categories!
Gameplay - Flow
Gameplay - Battle and Equipment Systems
Gameplay - Out of Battle
Graphics
Music
Story
I work in percents, so everything will be out of 100. I weight all of the categories equally, in that each Gameplay Element will be valued as much as graphics or music. Thus, gameplay actually acounts for 50% of the total score for the game. I see games as the limitations their systems provide, and the graphics and other elements as filler, and that's the reason that Gameplay weighs in so harshly.
Gameplay - Flow
This game flows very smoothly in terms of how and where battles and story parts occur. One of the cool systems it has in place is an unnamed but omnipresent "Enemy Density" system. Essentially, an area has a certain number of enemies that will appear for random battles, and they can be annihilated until there are none left. Some areas have more random battles than others, but this system exsits all over the game and is very nice. In addition to this, the game tells you how "close" you are to a random battle. There is a green -> blue -> yellow -> orange -> red bar in the bottom right corner of the screen, and as this bar gets towards red, random battles are more likely to happen. I'm assuming this works like "green = 10%chance per step"... "red = 80%chance" or something along those lines, and it actually works very well. It makes it so you won't generally fiNISh a battle, take a step, then be in another right away - which is a problem that plagues many RPGs. Concluding this thought, I'd like to make the point that this game implements what I'd call a "semi-random" battle system, in that the system implies randomness but does not truly contain it. It's hard to wrap your mind around, and a lot of players probably won't even notice it, but it's the kind of little thing I love to see that makes games slightly more playable... it's also important because battles actually take a decent amount of time if you want to bring up your DP (which is a system I will explain soon.)
The flow of the game generally moves like this... story -> explore an area -> find areas within the region that have some more story -> perhaps fight a boss... -> repeat. It's typical RPG fare, of course. The cool thing, however, is that this game has lots of room for exploration... I find it has a much less linear design when compared to a lot of RPGs, like Final Fantasy X for example, which was so linear in its design it was sickening (though its battle system was awesome). Because of the Enemy Density system, the story flows well between the action sequences. Also, the story segments are not too long and are also not too frequent, but are not placed too far apart so the moments between the story never seem tedious.
Flow - 100%
Gameplay - Battle and Equipment Systems
This is always my real test of whether a game is awesome or not... because I really love breaking game systems if they're fun to break. This one doesn't seem so breakable, which does sort of annoy me, but despite that I enjoy unbreakable games that have interesting systems to play with, especially if they allow a decent amount of customization. Luckily, this game does have a decent amount of customization. There are two systems in play that allow for this customization.
- Grathmelding
- Enhance
Grathmelding (weird name, I know...) is pretty much a synthesis system. You take items and you stick them together and make better items... items whose strengths and weaknesses are based on the grathmeld crystals that you build the item with. There's not really much to say about it, actually, aside from that. You get cards with recipes, then you smith or mix the recipe to make the item. The system introduces flexability through the grathmeld crystal system, allowing you to create better grade items.
The real customization comes from the enhancement system. The weapons have slots in them in which you can equip crystals, levelled 1 through 4, which add abilities to your weapons. They add things like elemental damage, or extra attack power, or a plethora of other add-ons to the weapons (or armours, or accessories). You can easily customize your wespons situationally and permanently with these add-ons, as they can be added and removed at will. Interesting things can definitely be done with this system, combined with the Grathmelding system, to create very cool and customizable characters.
On to the battle system, now. At first glance, it will actually remind you of Valkyrie Profile, most likely, just because of the look and feel of it (being sprite-based helps this comparison touch base even more closely than if the game were 3D. However, it actually plays out more like the battle system from Final Fantasy X. If you remember, I mentioned before that I liked the battle system from Final Fantasy X, and I really did. It was a very well thoguht out system and I believe that with a bit of refining to make it more strategic, and better customization elements, it could have been the best FF battle systerm ever. That is essentially what the battle system in Ar Tonelico is. It is a more refined and strategic version of the Final Fantasy X battle system.
Instead of the characters being in one row, they are in three rows, and the first three block characters block the mage in the back, who is the most important character on the team (especially in boss fights) and is also one of the story drivers (you'll see what I mean when I talk about storyline.) There are a few systems that combine to make up the battle system. The turn-based system works a lot like the one in Final Fantasy X, where the characters and enemies work turn for turn with eachother, and there is a delay marker for each attack that will shift turn order around. The turn order can be manipulated by eliminating enemies before they get their turns, allowing your characters to get more attacks in before the slower enemies can do anything. This is fun and exciting, and I love it. Some people think that non-ATB systems aren't as good, but I disagree. I love having time to plan out attacks and crunch a few numbers before attacking, although in this game I sometimes dread letting battles move on too far because of a certain aspect of the battle music that annoys the hell out of me (more on the music when I get to that section.)
If I talk about every element of the battle system, this will definitely go on way too long, so I won't talk about everything, but I would like to say something about the mages in the game. The mages work in a very strange way in Ar Tonelico; they are song mages - they attack by singing - and music is one of the story-drivers of the game. Their attacks are powered up by the "harmony" system that is in the game. Harmony is being equivocated in the case of the game, where it refers to the way the characters work together (in harmony), and that translates to musical harmony in the voice of the song mage, who then uses that to strengthen their song. MP is used to cast the spells, and as the song continues, more MP is used. The song magic gains power depending on how long you let the song mage sing for, and the result can be devastating and can often one-shot enemies and bosses with thosands of damage at a time (if you build the attack up to that extent.)
All in all the battle system is very well excecuted. I have only one complaint, but it's more of a technical issue than a system issue. The battles sort of jam up here and there, in that they sometimes "skip" like a scratched DVD... where the PS2 will struggle to execute commands. You can look on Youtube for some videos and see what I mean by that. It doesn't cause any kind of problem, because there's no timing involved in the battle system (and that makes me incredibly relieved that this battle system is not ACTUALLY like Valkyrie Profile as it appeared on first glance), but it still peeves me slightly. Regardless, the system is excellent and thus...
Battle and Equipment Systems - 100%
Gameplay - Out of Battle
There are a few systems in play outside of battle. I will touch on two of them, the Talk system and the Dive system. Those are the main non-flow non-equipment elements outside of the game that are being used to drive the game. They are also connected elements, in that they both involve your song mages, and are also both story-telling devices, which make them even more interesting in how they are presented.
The talk system works similarly to the communication system in Luminous Arc. Certain things can be talked about with the Song Mages, which will get your main character (and by association, you, the player) to know the Song Mages better. It works differently from Luminous Arc, however, in that you cannot choose the conversation branches, and they are all scripted. As you get to know the characters better, a grid fills out to keep track of how close you are to your Mage. This grid determines how far into their "cosmospace" you can dive when you use the Dive system. What's the Dive system? That's up next.
The Dive system is an interesting system that they placed into the game, and is how the Song Mages gain new magic. You "dive" into their subconscious (known as their cosmospace), and walk around. It sounds weird, yes, but that's the way it is. Inside the cosmospace, you will meet the various facets of your characters, based on what depth of their subconscious you are in. You can also see simulatneous opposite versions of that character, such as Angel Aurica and Devil Aurica being on the same screen at the same time. They have dilemmas within themselves that they must solve, and in solving those dilemmas and problems, they craft magic to help work their subconsious mind out of its struggle - that magic then translates over to the real world and they can cast new spells. This system is incredibly intelligently put together, and they thought it through when making it. They realized they wanted strong character development in the game, but that too much unbroken dialogue would damage the fun factor of the game, so implemented this system in which you don't REALLY do anything other than walk around and read dialogue, but you FEEL like you're doing something because the dialogue is broken up into segments and the scenarios are always interesting. Not only that but this can generally be done at any time, in that if you get bored of it at any point you can continue the main plotline (with slightly weaker mages, but a still beatable game), and not be bored by overwhelming character development sections (that can sometimes plague games with those ENORMOUS cutscenes.)
The other clever thing about the dive system is that it works in harmony with the battle system, in that you need to build a connection in battle with your mage, as well as in their cosmospace. This makes the system a lot more believable, in that not just anyone can "dive" with a Mage, but their connection needs to be deep and the characters need to have a mutual trust. This is also a plot point in the game, the idea of trust and harmony between the Song Mages and Humans.
I can't really talk about much more without going into the story too far and spoiling things, because the OOB systems really do blend in very nicely with the story elements of the game, and all three gameplay systems work very very closely to eachother. I really find this game to have a well thought out OOB system, and combined with well executed flow, and a great battle system, the gameplay of this game is very well rounded off with another mark of ...
Out of Battle - 100%
Graphics
I have a lot less to say about this, and the following sections, as I don't find them to be particularly important in a game, though they do enhance the general feel of it. The graphics in this game are strangely executed. A lot of areas look funny and not so great, though the sprites look great - both in and out of battle. The attack animations are lacking, I find, and the spell effects could have been a lot cooler than they were. They obviously didn't have a huge budget with which to put this game together... and it does show. Keep in mind that I LOVE SPRITE BASED GRAPHICS and the great sprites get 100% from me, as they look super cool, but the other elements leave much to be desired, and thus ...
Graphics - 50% (33% of which are the Sprites, as I broke the mark down into 3 elements - Characters, Environments, and Attack Animations)
Music
I have somewhat of a bone to pick with the music in this game. A LOT of it is really really good. A LOT OF IT reminds me of Valkyrie Profile music, which is a very good thing. A LOT OF IT is really quite enjoyable, and it's also very catchy at times. It fits well into the environment, most of the time, and it never gets repetitive - even if you're in an area for a while. So what's my problem with the music? Well it's actually NOT the music in general AT ALL that I have a problem with. It's a single song. The battle song. RPG battle songs are a sacred thing to me, and you hear a lot of them in any good RPG, so they'd better be good. The one in this game IS good, until the game starts rapping at you. Yeah... it raps at you. And it's not good rap, either. It's bad rap. And it is very annoying. It ruined my experience with the song, and I actually try and end battles before it happens as often as I can (while maintaining a good level of DP from the battle, which sometimes takes a while to build up.)
Aside from that, though, the music is very good, and thus...
Music - 90%
Story
I hate giving things away, so I'll write this as one sentence. There are viruses in a tower, a knight is sent to try and find a crystal to stop the destruction of his home, things go awry, there is an evil organization that are meanies to Song Mages. This is all within the first couple of hours of the game, so I don't feel bad telling you that stuff, but I won't go any further because it would bother me. So I leave you with a score...
Story - 70%
Summary - 85%
Take note that I have not explained everything in the game in terms of systems, but this review is long enough as is. If you're not sure whether or not to buy the game, you can do one of two things to help yourself...
A) Leave a comment on my blog and I will answer any questions you post concerning the gameplay systems(my blog is located at http://beyond-tactical-rpgs.blogspot.com)
B) Read one of the faqs on http://www.gamefaqs.com to find out more about the game.
For more reviews like this, as well as advice on games, go to http://beyond-tactical-rpgs.blogspot.com - it is updated multiple times per week with articles, reviews, system breaks, and more on RPGs and Tactical RPGs.
If you have any questions about this game or any other, leave a comment on my blog, OR email me at alsburyt at gmail dot com.
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