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As soon as I heard the demo for Asura’s Wrath was out today, I stopped doing whatever I was doing, turned on my PS3 and downloaded the demo. I was so excited because this is one of those over-the-top games that you don’t see that often. The last one was Bayonetta in my opinion and it was a great game. But unfortunately Capcom’s Asura’s Wrath disappointed me, a lot.

The demo gives you two episodes (5 and 11) to play with and you are controlling the main protagonist Asura. In episode 5 you will fight against a big fat deity (one of many deities in the game) and in episode 11 you will fight against your ex-master. Let me cut it short and tell you that, this game, or at least the demo, is nothing but a combination of button mashing and quick time events. Most of the time you will be clicking or mashing the circle button until your Burst gauge fills up and the scene continues when you release the Burst by pressing R2. There is barely any time where you will actually be playing the demo as an action game. You are basically watching an interactive movie, mind you, a pretty good anime movie to be honest because it reminds me of Dragon Ball Z, one of my childhood all time favorite. But then again, would I buy this interactive anime movie/game for the full $59.99 price tag plus tax? Hell no!

I really hope the full game offers more than what the demo did for me as this is quite disappointing as I have high hopes on this one based on the trailers so far. But if all I did was pressing buttons while watching an anime, this one wouldn’t go well in my opinion.

Latest trailer from GameTrailers.com:

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We’ve heard about some kid marrying one of these anime girls a while back, then recently Konami announced Hotel Plus so that these kids can spend some quality time with their dead girlfriends, actually they were never alive to begin with, by the sea. It is sort of like traveling and going on vacation, except by yourself and your DS. Kudos to Konami for knowing how to profit off these poor souls with no real social interaction with real people, especially the girls.

I would love to see these guys get all awkward and stuff when they find out they are dating the same girls since there are only 3 girls in the game, though they have many hair styles to choose from. But they are still the same characters nevertheless. So have fun with that.

This is why Japan has such a low birth rate due to the fact that all the guys over there are obsessed, yeah OBSESSED with virtual girls. I know the game and the series in general offers tons of customization and possibilities but I still don’t think the game girls can ever replace the real thing, errr girls. Bottom line? Excuse my language but I just think they need to get laid. Period. End of story.

I’m so glad I have a real girlfriend and I won’t trade her for any game characters, no matter how cute/hot they are. In the end, they are still god damn pixels.

I mean, come on look at this trailer:

One word, stunning, I’m still stunned by the fact that its done in 6 years and 4 months (a bit long), its 22 feet long, 3 feet wide and weighting more than 300 pounds. A Japanese studen has built the legendary Japanese battleship – Yamato. He built it section by section just like real world ship building. The main turrets can turn as well! Talk about attention to detail, I totally didn’t expect him to put motors underneath them.

At the end of the movie trailer, there was the futuristic Yamato battleship from the famous anime as well. This guy is definitely a talent. He is pretty much the best non-professional Lego builder I’ve seen.

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I have never been a fan of those Japanese anime style visual novel games where you get to choose different actions for each situation and having a different ending every time. But being a video game fanatic I had to try out everything at least once and that was a long time ago.

Before discovering Tycoon Games, I had no idea there are English versions of such visual novel games. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since some people from the States and Canada or even in Europe are probably into these kind of games too.

Tycoon Games offers anime style adventure games as well as dating sim games. I had a chance to try out one of the adventure games called Heileen: Sail to the New World since they offer a Flash based version of the game with one of the episodes from the full game, a very convenient way to try out games without downloading anything to your hard drive. The downloadable demo includes the first three chapters of the game.

The first thing I noticed was the game’s soothing music and it actually reminded me of the Japanese version of this type of games. The game pretty much starts off as soon as you mouse click the screen. You play as Heileen, the main protagonist of the game and immediately you will be talking to other characters such as Magdalene, Otto and Lora. You will be presented with a few options for the next action, your action will determine which ending you will see. Although the Flash demo is relatively short, you still get to take a glimpse of what kind of story you will be expecting from the full game.

In terms of graphics, characters as well as the background images which basically tell you where you are current at, are very well drawn. The graphic designers have done a great job at drawing the characters, very anime.

Overall the game is pretty decent, the fact that I played through the demo and read through all the conversations shows the game is quite interesting. If you are into visual novel + adventure + anime games then you should check this game out.

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Finally I got my hands on a copy of this game, Dissidia: Final Fantasy is the newest Final Fantasy game released for the Sony PlayStation Portable or PSP. I have the Japanese version and the North American version will arrive sometime mid year in 2009. Honestly I thought this game wouldn’t suit me but I was wrong, very wrong!

Story and game play
After a quite long but very enjoyable opening cinematic of the good and evil, you will pretty much get the idea of what’s going on. Cosmo, the goddess of harmony (the good) and Chaos, the god of discord (the evil) have both summoned a few of the past Final Fantasy characters to fight for his/her side. Honestly I didn’t know any of those characters prior to Final Fantasy 6 until I played this game. I was in grade 6 when Final Fantasy 6 (3 in America) came out, so can’t blame me.

  

The heroes:

-Warrior of Light – Final Fantasy
- Firion – Final Fantasy II
- Onion Knight – Final Fantasy III
- Cecil Harvey – Final Fantasy IV
- Bartz Klauser – Final Fantasy V
- Terra Branford – Final Fantasy VI
- Cloud Strife Final – Fantasy VII
- Squall Leonhart – Final Fantasy VIII
- Zidane Tribal – Final Fantasy IX
- Tidus – Final Fantasy X
- Shantotto – Final Fantasy XI (Ahh our beloved and adorable tarutaru!)

  

The Villains:

- Garland – Final Fantasy
- Emperor – Final Fantasy II
- Cloud of Darkness – Final Fantasy III
- Golbez – Final Fantasy IV
- Exdeath – Final Fantasy V
- Kefka Palazzo – Final Fantasy VI
- Sephiroth – Final Fantasy VII
- Ultimecia – Final Fantasy VIII
- Kuja – Final Fantasy IX
- Jecht – Final Fantasy X
- Gabranth – Final Fantasy XII

Initially you have to go through the Prologue which acts like a series of tutorials for the game. I really like this game because it is a combination of board game, action and RPG all in one! The Prologue will teach you how to navigate through the board, obtain items from treasure chests, fight monsters etc. At first you might feel overwhelmed, at least I did, with all the features and options. But since the menus are so elegantly designed it was easy to get used to and which button is for what option. Unlike the Macross Ace Frontier that I reviewed about two weeks ago. This is what I expect from Square Enix from all its games and so far I have not been disappointed.

  

There are two main modes – the story mode and 1 on 1. The story mode will let you pick which character you want to play the story with. The 1 on 1 to me is just a way to level grind your characters.

As you fight through battles and completing stages, you will gain experience points as well as items and gils (money) which can be used to booster your character’s stats and purchase new weapons/items from the shop.

There are quite a lot of things to cover in terms of the actual game play because its separated between the board game part as well as the actual battles. I will try and cover as much as I can.

The board game part pretty much determines how many battles you will be fighting, on the board there will be treasure chests, healing item, monsters (for you to fight and gain experience and items) as well as a statue that you have to destroy in order to finish a particular stage (note you don’t necessary have to kill all enemies to finish the stage, destroying the statue is enough, at least this is what I’ve seen so far. During each stage, you will be given points called Destiny Points, its basically just points for you to navigate throughout the stage, if you manage to complete the stage without going to the negative, you earn more points after completing the stage, sometimes I find that you have to get to the negative in order to get to everything (or maybe I just suck). You can refill your DP by completing the DP Chance like defeating your enemy within 10 seconds or trigger your EX attack (the special move which I will talk about later) within 10 seconds (not all enemies have DP Chance so you have to plan the way you move throughout the board.

  

On the board, you don’t just move around though, you also have skills that you can use such as healing 30% of your HP or cast negative effects onto your enemy that is adjacent to where you are. Finally you can also press R to go into search mode and check on each enemy’s level as well as the the DP Chance ahead of time. I don’t find it that useful though.

That should cover the basics of the board game part now onto the actual battle!

Battles are very fast paced, the square and circle buttons are for attack, R is defend, L is toggling targeting on/off (sometimes you want to go somewhere else and not looking at your enemy all the time), triangle allows you to walk on walls or jump from one place to another (pretty handy when you fight in a stage where there is hardly anywhere for you to walk on, you will have to jump around) and cross is jump. EX attack or special move is triggered when the EX gauge is full and by pressing R+square. If you have esper equipped, you can call it out by pressing R+circle, again when the EX gauge is full. You will slowly fill up your EX gauge when you attack, being attacked or by obtaining the EX fill up item that appears randomly during battle.

Once EX attack is triggered, a sequence of buttons will be displayed to you, you will have to get them correctly to get the maximum number of hits out of it and in the end, you will hit the button that will be displayed to you for the final blow as well. I haven’t mastered this attack yet though.

  

Upon leveling up, your character will not only gain stats, but he/she will also gain more skills that you can map to your keys. Pressing left and circle can have a different attack than pressing right/top/down and circle! So the combination is endless, well not literally but you get my idea. That goes for the square button attack as well. You can also pick a different EX attack from the EX Mode menu. This should give you at least some ideas of what this game has to offer. I’m PRETTY sure there are more features that I have not covered, like this mini game like option that requires PP that I’m still trying to figure out what its for, all I know is that I used up 30PP to do something related to “treasure hunting in a cave”. Sorry I can’t read too much Japanese.

There is also a multiplayer mode but I haven’t had the opportunity to test it out.

  

Graphics and audio
The graphics are pretty impressive, and I’m not just talking about the CG intro but game play graphics as well. Character facial animations are one of the best I’ve seen on a PSP, you can really see detailed facial animations from each character. The way their eyes blink to how their mouths/lips move as they talk is so smooth its like watching an anime. This is pretty much the best feature I like about Dissidia: Final Fantasy in terms of graphics.

Also worth a mention is the special/lighting effects of the game, be it whether you are moving on the board, scrolling through menus or battling enemies as well as the destructable objects and when you or your enemy gets pushed into a wall, the wall will break too. All these really enhance the game making it more realistic.

Square Enix has been known for having some of the best music composed in the gaming industry if not the best. And Dissidia: Final Fantasy is no exception but then again the game basically uses music from all the Final Fantasy series.

Final verdict
If you are a Final Fantasy fan, I don’t see why you would want to miss this, of course unless you don’t have a PSP then I can’t blame you. But if you are a fan and own a PSP, I suggest you pick up the Japanese version if you can’t wait for the North American version on ebay or yesasia. The fact that this game has features from board games, action/fighting games and traditional RPG games should be more than enough to satisfy a wide range of gamers that are into different game genres. Finally, this game has so much features to offer that I think its worth more than what I’ve paid for, you don’t see a lot of games like that too often!

9.0/10

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Macross Ace Frontier is basically the Macross version of Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable. For those that don’t know Macross, its another Japanese anime with robots. The japanese version of the game has actually be released more than two months ago and no words for a North American release yet, as usual. The main ones are different though as they can transform into three different forms – plane, half plane half robot and full robot mode. Check out the latest series called Macross Frontier which just ended recently (25 episodes in total).

  

Story and game play
There are two game modes for Single player – campaign mode and free mode. Everyone should know what you can do in free mode (just incase you don’t, you can pick random levels to play). Campaign mode contains four stories from the anime series ranging from the very first series Macross, Macross Plus, Macross 7 and finally the newest Macross Frontier.

I first started with the very first series Macross and first thing I don’t like right away is how crowded the menus are and its just so hard to navigate and too much to read (see image). It will take some time to get used to.

  

Missions are relatively short so its really good for people looking for on-the-go kind of games. There is one type of mission that I absolutely hate and Bandai Namco keeps implementing this type of mission in all these games – stupid crate pick up game where you have to pick up supply crates from one spot back to the ship which I find it really annoying and waste of time. Other than that, I don’t have much more to complain. It plays just as well as the Gundam counterpart. Also, you now have a partner that will assist you in missions as well and it does a pretty find job at helping instead of getting into your way. Your partner loves going out there all by itself sometimes. Unless you give your partner a specific task like defend, attack, grapple and operator (I assume the operator will tell you your current object if choosing this option)

I would also like to point out that there are many large scale battles, while they are very intense and fun to play. As trade off, the game suffers frame rate problems during these battles.

I haven’t had a chance to test but multiplayer mode supports up to 4 players.

  

Controls are identical as well (go figure) with one button for melee, range weapon, boost/jump and even the special attacks are the same (L + melee/change target/both). Enough with similarities, there are in fact differences between Macross and Gundam. First of all, as mentioned the main Macross robots can transform into three different modes (I know some Gundams are transformable too like Z Gundam, ZZ Gundam etc but they don’t have the half plan half robot form) with your analog button. I prefer the robot mode though because the other two modes you are constantly moving since you are a plane/half plane and I find it hard to control still as in the ones in the Gundam game. And as usual, you will unlock new robots, leveling up you and your partner after completing missions as well as abilities which is something new. Abilities like higher defense and further sight etc. Upon finishing up each series you will also unlock a few missions where you will get to play as the enemy from that series.

Another major difference is weaponry, Macross robots are famous for their missiles. The game does a nice job of showing that by having two modes of missiles. The first one is your normal lock-on missiles for a single target and the second one allows you to lock-on to multiple targets (by holding the circle button and the computer will auto lock-on to the targets for you, provided you are in range) which I find pretty interesting. I also find it fun to launch missiles non-stop at targets until you run out. By the way, all weapons can be recharged and the recharge time can be reduced through upgrade. The missiles are kind of overpowered in my opinion, but then again you are deal with a lot more enemies in this game then in the Gundam ones.

  

There is nothing new in the upgrade section except it looks more crowded with the menu design. Your upgrades will reflect on your partner’s robot as well so you don’t have to waste your upgrade points on the same type of robot, doesn’t make sense to anyway. You can upgrade a wide range of options like having more ammo in your gun, longer boost, reduced recharge time, more HP and of course stronger weapons etc.

Completely new to this game, or this type of game is the addition of customizing your own robots with different colors. The customization has three parts, main body, secondary body and the eyes. There are also many preset colors for you if you are too lazy to bother playing and testing with the colors yourself. This feature is a big PLUS as I always think being able to personalize your items, in this case, robots makes the game ten times more enjoyable because you can really call it your own.

  

Finally, you can also switch between first and third person view and I find it very helpful to be in first person when you are in the plane mode. It gives me the Ace Combat feeling actually. Pretty neat feature there!

Graphics and audio
Again, graphics are similar to its Gundam counterpart. I know I’ve been saying this for the past few PSP reviews but I think its true as you can’t really go any further on a PSP than it possibly can. All I can say is that its good enough to be enjoyable. This goes to audio as well, nothing new here, just your usual robot moving sound, machine/laser gun and missiles firing. And as long as the game uses actual music from the anime series, I’m happy. I would be even happier if they actually implemented songs with people actually singing like Gundam vs Gundam instead of just plain music.

[correction] Its probably the first Macross series that doesn’t have songs, if you pick the Macross Frontier series, you will actually hear a song instead of just music on the very first level. So there are songs but not on every single level and I suspect only on a few levels.

Final verdict
Another great game that I am sure Gundam/Macross or any robot fans will enjoy. While it didn’t try to reinvent the wheel, it did add a few new features to the game. The greatest feature being the ability to customize your robots with different colors. And again, tons of unlockables like robots, missions and character abilities. If you really want this game even if you don’t know Japanese, you can find it on yesasia and ebay as well.

8/10

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I know Secret of the Solstice isn’t exactly a new game, it was released January of this year. But I just found out about it, believe me, there is no way to know every single online game out there with so many Massively multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG in short games with a lot of them being free. And I’m don’t regret registering for my free account, downloading the 1.22gb of install file and getting hooked onto this game. Just like any other MMORPGs that I played, be it free or with monthly fee. And when there is a worthy game, I want to share it with everyone.

The game also has its own blog and stay up to date on this game as well as other games that Outspark Games offer.

 

Now onto the actuall game review. First impression, the game reminds me of Ragnarok Online or RO which is another MMORPG, this game has been out since 2002 and remains popular even after it turned from free to monthly paid subscription and now back to free. The two game are very similar with your usual anime style 2D Spirte with 3D-ish environments. And if you want to get your hands on special items, you will have to actually pay for them, with real money and not game money.

 

After a bunch of patches, I fired up the game and again similar to RO, you are to get familiar with the game and where different buildings are such as general item store, blacksmith, hotel etc. The first few levels are easily obtained by performing simple quests from the Solstice Guide NPC. One thing I like about this is the fact that all the walking is done for you for these tutorial type quests. While I am running around to different places, I notice the running animation is also better than that of RO, then again RO has been out for a lot longer. So I’m not bashing RO but just that its nice to see some improvements from another game. The clothing also looks more detailed and has more varieties which could just be because I am new to this game though.

 

In terms of game play, I haven’t found any major lag, not even noticeable ones which is always good. I remember back then RO would get so laggy and resulted in me logging out and not play the game. People are friendly in general, always willing to help out the newbies. I have decided to become an acolyte after getting up to level 16. Weapons, armors and other support items are relatively expensive in my standards. The targeting system als works like a charm, specially for magic castors, all you have to do is left click on an enemy or a player, and you can cast magics on them without retargetting them and avoid potential miss target. Enemies have colors range from white to red as white means the easiest and red means hardest (most likely impossible to kill).

 

Music is pretty pleasant most of the time, but it gets really repetitive with the techno music when you are in some of the dungeons.

As any other MMO games, its always more fun and enjoyable partying up with others, Secret of the Solstice is no exception. It can get very dull and boring hunting on your own, even though sometimes you have to.

If you want to further customize your character, you can also purchase unique clothing to personalize your character(s) but that will cost you money, and we are talking about real money.

After a few days of playing this game, I think Secret of the Solstice is definitely a good game for those who likes anime, level grinding or just casual play. I mean the game is free so there is nothing to lose but just your time. And if you hate the game you won’t waste time and keep playing it anyway.

Give it a shot and sign up!

7.5/10

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Today I had a chance to spend some time on Garnet Chronicle, an anime style RPG game but unfortunately its the Japanese version and as far as I know there is no release date for the English version.

Story and controls

  

Since its in Japanese, I vaguely know what is going on, so far! Your hero character is a knight student from a Knight academy. Your first quest is to bring a recommendation letter from the principle of the academy to the commander somewhere near the village. All of a sudden the entire battalion is being attacked by an evil looking character and his werewolf like companion, to no surprise, the entire battalion is wiped out and of course our main hero survives but barely and saves by a sexy female elf thief/treasure hunter. From then on, she joins you in the quest for the “Stone of the Evil Mind” (sorry that’s a direct translation from Japanese to English). Then once inside the “Tower of Lost” you meet up with another character, this time he’s a wizard class and he joins you afterwords. That’s how far I am in the game.

  

The controls are typical walk with your analog stick, R will bring up the map but so far there is no map when venturing inside dungeons, circle is confirm while cross is cancel, typical Japanese style, the American version might have these two buttons reversed. Unfortunately there’s no run button so walking around might feel slow at times. You can also save the game anytime and thankfully the menus are in English as well as the Japanese explanation, only the menus though.

Game play and graphics
Game play is pretty much the same old turn based RPG similar to Final Fantasy (up to Final Fantasy X-2 since the battle system has changed starting FF11). You and your enemies will take turns to attack/defend/cast magic on each other. Which is fine except it feels really slow and rather boring, it would make a huge difference if the attack was smoother and faster such that attacks are executed as soon as the one before finished its move. But as you gather more people on your team, the fight gets more interesting and faster so its not too bad after all. Level grinding is also part of the game but not necessary. It is surprisingly fast to level up though, at least for the first 20 or so levels which can really speed up the grinding. As you finish each battle you are rewarded with money, experience, random items and skill points. Skill points can be spent on each character’s skill tree to unlock more powerful attack and support skills. Skill points are shared among all your characters unfortunately! And last but not least money you earned from each battle obviously will be for buying weapons, armors and support items. There are also cards and stones that can enhance your weapons such as turning your sword to have ice element and upgrade your special abilities. Treasure chests are scattered all over the map, inside buildings, out in the woods or anywhere in the villages. Some are less obvious as I have found one hidden one so far.

  

One interesting feature that I have never seen before, at least in an RPG, is the “sneak” feature. When you approach your enemies from behind without being spotted, you can deal damage to them before the battle starts. Same applies to the enemies, if they spotted you, they would run to you and if your back is facing them then you will get attacked first. You will know when your enemies have spotted you when an exclamation mark appears on top of their heads. This feature is independent of who attacks first when the battle begins, so that means there’s a chance you can attack twice before an enemies can attack you, same applies to the enemies. If you can utilize this feature you can really gain an upper hand when fighting and makes battles a lot easier.

Graphics are nothing fancy but well drawn anime style. Everything is 2D based but don’t let that get you because even though the characters are simple 2D sprites, their expressions and body gestures can be seen clearly depend on the situations. There are also nice flashy special effects when your characters use their speical abilities.
One thing I don’t like is the fact that, all enemies look the same on the map, so you don’t know what kind of enemies you will face until the battle screen comes up. I don’t see why the developers cannot make the enemies show up on the map as well. But then again, what if there are more than one type of enemies, which one would they show? Maybe that’s the reason why.

  

Sound

Your typical anime music, your characters and enemies will say something before they attack which makes battle less dull. Sometimes your characters will even voice over during conversations. I can imagine the English translation will be bad and takes away the Japanese “atmosphere” just like any other games that went through the Jap to English translation. In general the music is great most of the time, but sometimes they can get a bit too repetitive and get annoying afterwords.

Final Verdict
Overall I think this game is worth a try, this type of game is nothing new but the game is still enjoyable. I had problems turning off my PSP until it went out of batteries while playing it. That should give you an idea of how addictive and enjoyable this game is, specially for level grinders like myself. Hopefully the American version will be released soon so you English speaking people can enjoy this game as much as I am now. And for those that can read Chinese, Japanese or don’t care about the story, you should be able to get a copy from ebay or YESASIA.

8/10

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