Recent Video Games
Aug. 11th, 2008 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroGames I've played recently:
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
If you've liked any of the GBA or DS Castlevania games, you'll like this one. I've like them all. Classic platforming with variable difficulty depending on how much you're willing to grind. Actually, I thought this one was easier than most of the other games. I beat the final boss without too much trouble.
Phantom Hourglass
I thought I was going to love this. I've loved every portable Zelda thus far: Link's Awakening, the two Oracle games, and Minish Cap. The 3D Zelda games never won me, but the 2D ones using the tradition top-down view have always been a favorite. This one lost me with the stylus-only control scheme. I made it through the first dungeonbarely able to control the boomerang, and was then presented with a time-limited stealth section. Yeeeeeah...no.
Dark Cloud
There are some games where you tolerate the system because the story is so good. (There are some games where the reverse is true.) And then there are the games where you have to love the system in order to play them, because the story won't save it. The Disgaea games are kinda like that--Don't get me wrong, I think the cutscenes in those games are fantastic, but you need to love FFTactics-style games or the repitition will wear you out quick. Dark Cloud has a similar problem: If you like the combat system and the resource-management dugeon crawling (you have a thirst meter that functions as a time limit, and your weapons break after so many swings unless you use items to repair them), then you'll get 60 hours of gaming out of this. There are six areas, each with a 15-20 floor dungeon, and each floor has a certain number of macguffins to collect to reconstruct the town in that area. (Does the concept sound familar? Because Actraiser and Soul Blazer did it for the SNES, and did it better. Actraiser actually had simulationist aspects, and Soul Blazer wove the plot and game order very tightly into which people and structures you "freed".) I'll probably play a bit more of this to see if it grabs me more, but unless the gameplay really grabs me, I doubt I'll make it past the first area.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
This, on the other hand, was everything I was hoping for from Phantom Hourglass: Intuitive control scheme. Hack-and-slash 3/4-view action. Puzzles! Puzzles! Puzzles! The interaction between Yuri and Chelinka (the twin main characters) is a bit cloyingly sweet at times, but the in-game (strongly plot-related) explanation for magic was very clever, and plays out decently, if not spectacularly. I'm also hoping someone else I know who lives nearby picks up a copy, because the co-op mode looks like a lot of fun.
Final Fantasy 4 DS
I started drooling over this when it was first announced, and I haven't been disappointed. Plotline is so far unchanged, with the best translation yet (and Edward is still spoony), and lots of new features. All of the special abilities from the full version are available (as they were in FF4 Advance), plus you can get "Augments" to add additional abilities to your characters, including the abilities of characters that have permanently left. There is a new summon monster, and a bunch of minigames that you can play to boost up his stats. Each dungeon has a mapping system that rewards you for 100% completion (and is fairly easy to do, unlike the mapping system in Star Ocean, for instance. 99.8% my ass). The graphics are totally updated, including new in-system cutscenes. Now, granted, FF2 for the SNES was the first real crpg I played, and one of the first games I really fell in love with: I've played that original a half a dozen times, plus a fan-translated FF4j Hardtype, FF4 Advance, and now this. So take it with a grain of salt when I say this is like seeing your favorite Shakespeare play done by a new troupe with an excellent take on it.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
If you've liked any of the GBA or DS Castlevania games, you'll like this one. I've like them all. Classic platforming with variable difficulty depending on how much you're willing to grind. Actually, I thought this one was easier than most of the other games. I beat the final boss without too much trouble.
Phantom Hourglass
I thought I was going to love this. I've loved every portable Zelda thus far: Link's Awakening, the two Oracle games, and Minish Cap. The 3D Zelda games never won me, but the 2D ones using the tradition top-down view have always been a favorite. This one lost me with the stylus-only control scheme. I made it through the first dungeonbarely able to control the boomerang, and was then presented with a time-limited stealth section. Yeeeeeah...no.
Dark Cloud
There are some games where you tolerate the system because the story is so good. (There are some games where the reverse is true.) And then there are the games where you have to love the system in order to play them, because the story won't save it. The Disgaea games are kinda like that--Don't get me wrong, I think the cutscenes in those games are fantastic, but you need to love FFTactics-style games or the repitition will wear you out quick. Dark Cloud has a similar problem: If you like the combat system and the resource-management dugeon crawling (you have a thirst meter that functions as a time limit, and your weapons break after so many swings unless you use items to repair them), then you'll get 60 hours of gaming out of this. There are six areas, each with a 15-20 floor dungeon, and each floor has a certain number of macguffins to collect to reconstruct the town in that area. (Does the concept sound familar? Because Actraiser and Soul Blazer did it for the SNES, and did it better. Actraiser actually had simulationist aspects, and Soul Blazer wove the plot and game order very tightly into which people and structures you "freed".) I'll probably play a bit more of this to see if it grabs me more, but unless the gameplay really grabs me, I doubt I'll make it past the first area.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
This, on the other hand, was everything I was hoping for from Phantom Hourglass: Intuitive control scheme. Hack-and-slash 3/4-view action. Puzzles! Puzzles! Puzzles! The interaction between Yuri and Chelinka (the twin main characters) is a bit cloyingly sweet at times, but the in-game (strongly plot-related) explanation for magic was very clever, and plays out decently, if not spectacularly. I'm also hoping someone else I know who lives nearby picks up a copy, because the co-op mode looks like a lot of fun.
Final Fantasy 4 DS
I started drooling over this when it was first announced, and I haven't been disappointed. Plotline is so far unchanged, with the best translation yet (and Edward is still spoony), and lots of new features. All of the special abilities from the full version are available (as they were in FF4 Advance), plus you can get "Augments" to add additional abilities to your characters, including the abilities of characters that have permanently left. There is a new summon monster, and a bunch of minigames that you can play to boost up his stats. Each dungeon has a mapping system that rewards you for 100% completion (and is fairly easy to do, unlike the mapping system in Star Ocean, for instance. 99.8% my ass). The graphics are totally updated, including new in-system cutscenes. Now, granted, FF2 for the SNES was the first real crpg I played, and one of the first games I really fell in love with: I've played that original a half a dozen times, plus a fan-translated FF4j Hardtype, FF4 Advance, and now this. So take it with a grain of salt when I say this is like seeing your favorite Shakespeare play done by a new troupe with an excellent take on it.
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Date: 2008-08-11 05:50 pm (UTC)While DS games have made huge advances in straight puzzles and rhythmn games, they interfaces for traditional action or adventure still don't quite work.
I'm playing the most recent advance wars, and while very fun, the interface is a painful amalgam of the traditional and touchscreen.
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Date: 2008-08-11 06:34 pm (UTC)I have Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, but as much as I love the Metroidvania games, I needed a break after Dawn. I'll probably start it around the time Order of Ecclesia comes out... So many games! No time! I'm actually planning to download Castlevania IV for the Wii Virtual Console. The idea of a 2D platforming linear Castlevania game is really appealing to me, and I've never played it before.
I'm in the middle of Trauma Center right now. It's perfect for the touchscreen and stylus, but pretty damn hard.