Dragon Quest 9 - NDS (part 1)

When I write about Dragon Quest I know I'll be writing for more than just one part, so just for my own sake, I'm calling this part one. While the last Square Enix game took about 100 hours plus to completely attain all the achievements, and I didn't even get there, this game might take even more. I wasn't even sure if I was going to play this game. I mean, Dragon Quest? again? Why?

Well why not? I found myself starting this game in a hotel room in San Jose. Before long I wanted to play through the night. Playing through eight games, and the sound and feel of it has not changed a bit. From the opening score to the cheerful themed songs in the towns, I feel like I'm instantly transported to another world. Final Fantasy 13 took my breath away with it's 1080P graphics in a 30 gig blu-ray disc, but Dragon Quest 9 does the same on the NDS with just 250 megs!

But the game is not just all tradition, there are many new aspects about the game. To start, you not only can choose your hero's gender, but you can create his look. It's like playing the Sims to a small extent. Then you they expanded the inventory slots to more than just four, there there are seven items that a character can equip. Plus everything that you equip is displayed on the screen. It's just sad that you sometimes have to wear something uncouth like a tortoise's shell.
Next, there are no more random battles. Perhaps that bugs players that are learning about Dragon Quest, but I've lived through so many of it through the series and don't find it too much to complain. Although now with the ability to pick and choose which enemies to encounter, I find myself rushing to attack when I see a metal slime (or any of the metal family for that matter). Next there is the experience point splitting system. After the battle, the ones with higher levels will get more EXP. I guess this prevents you from power leveling a new person you create from level 1. And yes, most of the party members you get (at least from the beginning anyway) are those that you create and recruit yourself. I start with a priest (pole arms), martial artist (war fans), and theif (daggers). Another new development I notice is that when a character dies in battle, at least for boss battles, if the party wins, he still gets EXP. That's quite helpful as I tend to fight bosses under-leveled and I win by a hair many times. I don't like to "grind" much any more, so I tend to fight bosses before the recommended levels.

There are more game concepts that developed, but I'll have to reserve those for the second post.
For now, I'm trying to hack my way through the game. But life is busy at the moment. My game time has been reduced significantly. Until then, I'll be wearing slime earrings. Screenshots to come too.

Final Fantasy 13 - PS3 (part 2)

(img: a beautiful new era.) Final Fantasy 7 traditionalists will always say that Final Fantasy 10 does not compare to the classics. Final Fantasy 3 traditionalists will always say that the Final Fantasy 7 does not compare to the classics. Then again, Final Fantasy 1 traditionalists will say the same about all the other Final Fantasy games. So every new generation of Final Fantasy seems worse than the previous. Or so it seems.

(img: the highly advanced culture of Cocoon) After a grueling 55 hours of game play, and half of it wasn't really playing, I completed Final Fantasy 13. It wasn't that bad. Any game that you put in over 20 hours on, it probably wasn't that bad. I think in the big scheme of things, it's a good RPG. It didn't fare up to the older Final Fantasies, but I still think it's a good game.

(Img: Gran Pulse is a land of nature)The adventurers fall out of Cocoon and eventually arrive on Gran Pulse, a world totally undeveloped by humans. There are ruins of course, but as far as the eye can see you feel like you're on a great plain. It reminded me of the great Veldt in Final Fantasy 6. I wanted to see if there was a young kid named Gau roaming around. The monsters are huge, and the first time you see the adamantoises you can't help but be intimidated.

Not long after Pulse, well depending on how long you want to grind experience points, the group re-enters Cocoon and Eden. Talking about crashing the party. It's one of the most intense CGI / FMV's in the game, and I'm still wondering how to replay it after the game. With them going back, a warp gate is formed and hordes of Pulse animals pour through. I'm not saying just the wolves and the winged beasts, but the giant adamatoises as well. What a fun sight.

(img: the mood before the big fight.) I won't go into too much detail over the battle in Eden. But it leads you into Orphan's cradle where you battle the evil Barthanthelus and Orphan. The battle with Orphan was actually a difficult boss at my level. I did not have a fully powered team and my weapons were barely leveled up. My final party was Lightning, Fang, and Hope; quite standard I believe and it mostly hinged on Fang being able to hold up with her Sentinel role. But with a little luck, I was able to win the game. Well, I was able to complete the central narrative of the story, but the many side quests await.

(img: why is there a couch here?)

• Game Time: 55 Hours
• Completed game
• 30% of trophies collected for PS3 version

Gran Turismo - PSX

As the release day for Gran Turismo 5 looms over us, I want to take a look back at the first Gran Turismo that started it all in 1998, twelve years ago. It's hard to believe how few racing games there were before that.

What drove me to play the game was that it almost worked like an RPG to me. Instead of gaining levels, you gained licenses. Instead of upgrading weapons, you upgraded your vehicles. Instead of fighting monsters, you raced cars. It was a numbers game to me, and I liked it. I remember the first license that you have to do is the start and stop. All you had to do was stop the car within a certain distance and do it within a certain time frame, it was like 30 seconds or something, but it was something that I couldn't do in the first try. I couldn't do it in the first five tries to be honest. The game was hard, but it was fun to play. You start buying cars and you start learning a thing or two about automobile distributors from all over the world. It was car porn and young men loved it. It sold 10.85 million copies world wide, making it one of the greatest selling titles for Sony Playstation (wikipedia).

With great music and simple menus, the game really lived up to its name as the "real driving simulator". The game was intuitive in a sense that sooner or later you learned how to slow down at S-curves and attack hair-pin turns; because if you didn't, you probably would end up losing. Sure you can use a stronger vehicle, but a lot of races limited you into using only a specific type of car. I remember the "Normal Vehicle" race, where you can only pick from vehicles with their stock options with no upgrades. I'd always use the Dodge Viper. Because it started with 400 HP and it handled awesome. My next favorite car was the Hond Del Sol, modified by Mugen. It was small and nimble so it could get through all the tight spaces easily.

And I did so to get myself to first place. I completed almost all the races and collected all of the unlockable cars. I sometimes wish I can play this on a handheld, but I didn't buy a PSP. Either way, great memories with this game.

• Game Time: 100 Hours
• Completed game in all it's difficulties

Final Fantasy 13 - PS3

Like every other RPG fan in March, I took time out of my schedule to play Final Fantasy 13. Scoreless screen shots and reviews have been written on the game and I might as well try to write one also. I'm not going to lie, this isn't a game for everyone. It's not much of a RPG game, but it is a very beautifully crafted cinematic piece of work. I'm about 26 hours in and I'm not sure if I would class this as an interactive movie or a really linear episode of Final Fantasy.

The story begins with a band of outcasts are being chased down by the local government of Coccoon. They are seen as diseased elements and all those that come in contact with them are to be "purged"; they are the L'Cie. It's not long that you realize that Lightning, a former captain of the military is the main character. Snow, the young leader of the resistance group, NORA (No obligations or Authority?), gets sucked into the mess because he's trying to save his fiancee. His wife-to-be has already been changed from L'Cie to Crystal because she had fulfilled her "focus". This will inevitably happen to all L'Cie. The other three characters that get dragged into this are Sahz, Vanille, and a boy named Hope. They later meet a fighting woman named Fang, who is in search of Vanille; she plans to rescue her.

These six characters are in search of an author. No, not really, but they are in search of some answers as to what is the connection between Coccoon and Pulse, legendary city outside of their world. They're also wondering if it's better to fulfill their focus and become crystal, or run away. They've already tried running. So they decided to take up a third alternative and rush towards the highest office of the Coccoon order, the Sanctum, and ask for answers.

So if I had to guess what happened at the game designer's table at Square-Enix, I'd have to say they were trying to concentrate all the "good" stuff in Final Fantasy and take out all the "bad" stuff. The players love the feeling of beating a boss, so let's make it so that all the battles are pretty similar to boss battles. Players loved the seeing Cloud, Squall, or Tidus slashing monsters in the air, so why not make it so that you'd get to see that in every battle?! Sounds great so far. People love cinematics, lets give them more than they've ever seen before; how about one after every chapter! Now to the bad stuff. Players didn't like talk to people in towns, let's just take out towns. Let's take out weapon shops, item shops, magic shops, and inns and put them all neatly in a save-point. Let's take out that tedious aspect of healing yourself after the battle also. Well you get the point. It's evolution, sort of. I'm not saying I don't like the game, but it sure is a different approach to Final Fantasy.

For the best, longest, and funniest review of Final Fantasy 13, please see Action Button.net's review. It's 18,000 words, and pure entertainment.

Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Souless Army - PS2 (part 2)

Check out the first write-up about this game here: Part 1

Raidou, why did you choose to go against fate? That is one of the many conversations that the bad guys say to you in your attempt to save the metropolis of Tokyo from destruction. As your adventure goes from saving one girl to infiltrating secret government labs under the ocean, you realize that your "job" isn't just being a good detective; it's saving the world.

Well as the game proceeded to it's closure, I started getting really impatient with it. For some reason, the more I played towards the end, the more I felt disinclined to play it. Perhaps because I really wanted to get more demons, and I knew that the ending was coming up soon and I was nowhere close to getting even 80% of all the demons. My strongest persona was "Siegfried" at the time, and I started seeing enemies with higher levels from him. Then I realized that I was running out of time. Not because there are time limits in the game, but because of the big impending event, the release of Final Fantasy 13. I knew that once that came out, I'd devote all my time to it and not want to revisit this game. I made a time slot for the game, and finally beat it in a three hour sitting.

The game took Raidou to battle against Rasputin, the mythical Russian sorcerer, to a crazy robotic warship possessed by evil spirits. It was fueled by a satellite that you had to destroy. I really liked the concept of the game, and I think it would definitely make a great movie some day. There's a scene where they decapitate Rasputin's head and interrogate it for solutions as to how to stop the mutant warship robot. Why not? I guess. Magic, mayhem, and mischief - you'll find it all in this game.

But back to the battle. You defeat the warship by sending your cat buddy, Gouto, into space with one of your demons and have them destroy the core. With that, they sacrifice themselves in the skies. The robot that shook the shores and sent projectiles to the city was thwarted for awhile. But you know you have to stop the evil force that possessed Kaya. Save the cheerleader, save the world? Yeah, pretty much like that. Before you do so, the game made you go for one last pep talk with your buddies: the reporter girl, the Yakuza boss, and the rocket scientist. All great guys to have a drink with, I'm sure. From there you use a sacred talisman and transport yourself to the final dungeon, an astral plain where time moves in decades as you take a flight of stairs. I loved the lay-out of the place. Reminded me of Final Fantasy 4's Crystal palace and the final dungeons of Persona 4.

You fought left and right, destroying hour-glasses which contained "memories of old wounds". This was the game-makers' way of saying, "please beat these bosses again". It was not that bad, now that you're so much stronger, but of course it's tedious and uninteresting. Once you defeat them all you'll go on the stairway to 20XX, somewhere after 2050. You'll be greeted by an angry school girl rage and a katana. She wants to slash your head off, and that just might happen if you're slow with the controls. The presense inside Kaya will be the last boss. This is the entity that orchetrated the soulless army and defeating it will take you to the end of the game. Naturally, there's more than one boss. Perhaps a possessed warship? Yeah, why not. I stayed focus and was able to beat it in level 67. The game ends, and you're transported back to Tokyo. Kaya is conscious too. The world is saved, and Raidou the 14th did not disgrace his clan's name.

• Game Time: 36 Hrs and 10 mins.
• Completed game in normal difficulty

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - PS3

I played this through in about 10 sessions, and each of them got more and more difficult as the levels got increasingly tedious. I played the first two Call of Duty games on the PC and really enjoyed it. I think the mouse made it a bit easier to control because of my experience from Unreal Tournament. I told myself to try the COD4 because it's one of the games that made the current generation systems legit. People bought their Xbox 360 and PS3's for this title and it deserved the 20 or so odd hours I put on it.

(image: battle in the night) The game is good. The game is a bit too realistic in the fact that you can die easily, like actual warfare. I'll expound on this. The next thing is the graphics. Even though all games on the PS3 are HD, most of them are 720p - not many extend to the 1080p graphics which maximizes your television's limits. You can see specs of dust from your rifle and every demolished building is rendered to the closest detail. Lastly the story is actually engaging. Pieces of it must be from actual stories from the soldiers; I recognized the Black Hawk Down episode. I mean it actually moves like a movie, using the soundless slow-motion sequences and everything.

(Image: completing the game)I have to say that the worst part about the game is that I went from playing Resistance 2 to Call of Duty and the way you play is totally changed. I'm used to being a hero and gunning down grims with a shield on or camping in far off tower trying to mow down a giant alien behemoth. But now you're doing tasks that are done in a way that if you don't do it right, you will die and start over. And there are so many ways to die: bullets, rockets, grenades, exploding cars, and even getting mauled by a dog. I guess I wanted a God-mode through it all, but hell, it probably would have made the victories less satisfying. And this game does give you some sort of warrior's satisfaction. I mean, anybody that's done mission where you're fending the farm town from four tanks and you take them down one at a time with the javelin rocket will know that when it's over, you just can't help but smile. Or the level where you're playing Price when he was a greenhorn and you had to pull your mentor to safety as you snipe down scores of enemy combatants, it goes to say that when it's done and over, you just wonder if the game changed you into a gun-wielding crazy. It feels good to kill, and if the reason is because you're doing it out of self-preservation and the bad guy is truly a bad guy, it feels even better. I'm sure the game-makers at Infinity Ward knows this. They know that there is a dormant violent spirit within us, and they're just giving it a little push with their games.

The ending, when Price tosses you the side-arm and you know what you gotta do, it's nothing but pure satisfaction.

• Game Time: 20 Hrs
• Completed the game once on normal difficulty

Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen - NDS (part 2)

Without a doubt, this game took less time than I thought it would. I completed most of the first four quests in about 15 hours and began playing the final chapter in November. It took awhile to get back into it, but it was actually really enjoyable to play even for a game this old. I'm glad they brought it back to life with the DS remake and I think if I had more time I would play through the extras.

The game began to unfold as they described the story of Psaro the Man Slayer. He's the one behind all the evildoings in the game. Well, I guess he's the big thing that the demons have tried resurrecting. The story is that he did a lot of bad things because they imprisoned his girl, Rosa. Or was it that they killed that girl. I stopped paying attention at one point.

(My equipment for the last fight, don't forget to bring the Baron's horn so you can call your party before the boss) The fight with the final boss is tough, but not that tough. I went in there at level 36 with my crew of adventurers one or two levels below that. The boss is a golden guy, that you fight and he slowly disintegrates into a green gob with no arms or head. Fear not, he will regenerate into something more hideous and engaging. The most important thing here is remember to use the spell Oomph. It'd make your life easier. I started the part as the Hero, Alana, the Cleric, and the Black Mage. The first few forms of his body is hardly adversarial. Just keep "Kabuff" on and putting on "Oomph" on your characters. If you run into problems, don't forget that the Hero has "Omniheal", which fully recovers your entire party for 20 MP. As He starts to become whole again, in his final form, he'll start doing more fire spells so it's safe to say you'll need "insulate". But as long as you keep your Oomph up and attack him at least twice a turn, you'll be fine.

The ending is pretty much the same as the NES version. You visit all the towns of your party members and then you make a trek back to the home town, where you were raised by your foster parents. The place is burned down, but upon your return you find that young girl that saved your life by turning into your decoy. Finally you two can be together, and I guess it's speechless, but I hope you live happily ever after.

But wait! There's more. Because it's the NDS version, there's a added Chapter 6. I'm going to save that for another time. Until then, I might as well start on Dragon Quest 5.

The following are a lot of pictures I took along the way.

Culdcept DS - NDS

The hardest part about Culdcept DS is finding the control to stop playing Culdcept. This is one of the most addictive games ever made, for geeks and by geeks I presume. Seeing this new version of the game expanded into the NDS made me hesitant to get into the Magic / Monopoly world. The ability to play against your friends on your DS should be good enough a reason to get this game. It's not likely that it will get to the US any time soon, so I will talk a bit about it here.

The game is pretty much the same as Culdcept for PS2 and Xbox 360: Each player gets a hand of 7 cards, a deck of 50 cards, and you duke it out against the other players in dominating the placement of magical creatures on a board. The game play is the same and having a split view of two screen is actually quite convenient.

(Goligan, the staff) I usually specialize in Water creatures, and this time it's more than ever important to get lots them because of the card "Kelpie". This sea-horse like creature is like the Fire Card, "Old Willow" of the PS2 version - it forces the enemy to battle it upon crossing it. Getting that card will save you a lot of time.

I played it for about 20 hours before I beat the game and got my first Medal. I still play it from time to time because it's just that addictive. For a list of the medals, please check out this page. It's in Japanese, but you can google translate it.

http://exsir.exblog.jp/10076879/

• Game Time: 40 hours
• Completed the game 1x

Beating the last boss

The Goddess Culdcept has some words for you upon beating the game.

2009 - A year in review

Well let's face it, 2009 was in fact a year that I didn't play much compared to my usual. I guess that's a good thing. I got a PS3 in the last quarter of the year and started playing what I missed out on in the last four years. There were some games that I found interesting, but most of them were just eye-candy to me. I do find the wireless controllers a good and bad thing. The good is the controller works just as good as a wired one without the wire; the bad thing is that charging it is such a hassle because it doesn't charge when the PS3 is turned off. I use my iPod charger to charge it at times because the usb cord is too short for me. I am working on my Street Fighter 4 skills, but I doubt I can get good beyond Ken and Ryu. I started playing Resistance 2 and inFamous, but they're just keeping me busy in time for GT5 and FF13.

But anyway, in short, last year was a year of Shin Tegami Tensei. I started playing Persona 3 in the spring, Persona 4 in the Autumn, and now I'm almost done with Devil Summoner. They're great games and everyone should give them a try.

Here's a short recap of the games that I beat in 2009:

1. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI (PC) - 45 hrs
2. Puzzle Quest (DS) - 50 hrs
3. Rogue Galaxy (PS2) - 65 hrs 16 mins
4. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (DS) - 22 hrs 53 mins
5. Culdcept (DS) - 30 hrs
6. Persona 3: FES (PS2) - 111 hrs 41 mins
7. Google's Monopoly Streets (PC) - 50 hrs
8. Persona 4 (PS2) - 82 hrs 13 mins

*the write-up for Culdcept DS is taking longer than I thought. I keep playing it from time to time still.

I guess that's about 513 hours used on video-games last year. Hopefully I'll write more in 2010. My list of games that I didn't beat in 2009 includes: Shining Force Neo, Final Fantasy A2 (DS), Fire Emblem (Wii), Professor Layton and the Curious Village, God of War, Puzzle Quest: Galaxies, and numerous little DS games that I just start and forget all about.