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Legacy of Ys, Cooking Mama 3
My introduction to the Ys series of games was Ys III: Wanderers from Ys on the SNES. I thought it was a fun game, basically a cross between RPG and side-scroller, but insanely hard--I could hardly get through the first dungeon without both level-grinding and a Game Genie for invulnerablility. The Ys series combat system is such that you can't damage enemies unless you've reached a certain level, which means some levels and bosses are impossible unless you grind. Most of the rest of the series has been on consols I didn't own, and since Wanderers is basically a side-story, I never really knew the overarching plot of the series, or even what "Ys" was. (It's a floating continent. And really important to the mythology of the world, to the point that it gets its own two goddesses.)
I picked up Legacy of Ys Books I&II for the DS last summer, and played Book I then. The first two games (and apparently some of the later games) were top-down, and the original control scheme didn't involve an attack button; instead you had to ram enemies from the back or side so that they took damage and you didn't. The remake gives you the option of keeping that control scheme, or adding an attack button and the ability to damage enemies from the front. I opted for that. What didn't change is that the game still requires impressive amounts of grinding (particularly for an action/adventure game) and is punishingly hard. I'm playing on "Very Easy" mode, which means that most normal enemies are unlikely to instant-kill me and I can beat most bosses in three or four tries if I'm properly leveled. I'm not sure what kind of maniac the game's Hard mode was made for, but it ain't me.
Overall, the nostalgia value and series completeness is most of the reason to play the game, unless you're really into disturbingly hard Zelda-style top-down games. The plot is interesting and moderately involved (and there are actually recurring characters who get vague personalities), but there isn't enough of it to justify the time you have to spend grinding, even on the easiest difficulty setting. (Honestly, I think the difficulty I'm seeing should be the Easy mode, and "Very Easy" should allow you to blitz through the game in three hours slaughtering everything in your path. Maybe that's just me.) If the pacing of the story picked up about 50%, and there was a little more "go here now" prodding to prevent wandering away from the plot accidentally, it would be quite good.
Still, I think I have the fan translation of Ys IV for the SNES kicking around somewhere; perhaps I'll dig that out. And some Game Genie codes for it.
Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop has some lovely improvements over previous incarnations, and some additions that don't quite work. The stir-fry minigames have been changed so that you need to periodically trace designs, and besides my bizarre inability to draw a five-pointed star, I think it's much more fun than the old version. The new egg-cracking game is more like a rhythm game, which is cute. The new "dicing" game is annoying, as you need to hit colored balls as the knife moves, and the knife tends to speed up in arbitrary ways, making it hard to catch a good rhythm for it. And I have yet to actually succeed at the new stewing game, which involves picking the right ingredient to add from several choices under a very strict time limit, but I welcome that change nonetheless.
The other thing I've noticed is they added a more "forgiving" aspect to a few of the games. The "peel hot" game, in which you need to peel a hot potato before your hand burns, used to fail you if you held the potato too long. Now, you'll toss the potato in the air and have to blow on your hand, but then can catch it and resume, rather than failing the segment entirely.
The game brings back the "Cook with Mama" and "Cook for Friends" sections, and adds a "combination" section where you unlock recipes by combining two ingredients, all of which function pretty much the same as in previous versions and work nicely. The "Shopping" section seems hastily tacked-on--you manuver around a food store, trying to avoid running into other patrons (if you collide, they make you play a mini-game, but there are surprisingly few such games and they're very repetitive) and trying to collect the items on your shopping list. But the way those items spawn is intentionally spread-out and you can't start on the second/third/fourth set of items until you finish the first, so you can't be efficient about your shopping. It was fun for half an hour, but I doubt I'll go back to it.
In general, if you like the Cooking Mama series, this is a fun little time-waster. (For that matter, if you were just getting into the series, I'd probably suggest jumping straight to this one, or at least Cooking Mama 2, since many of the recipes and minigames from the earlier games get repeated.
It's been a very DS weekend. I have Nostalgia and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story to add to my list, too.
I picked up Legacy of Ys Books I&II for the DS last summer, and played Book I then. The first two games (and apparently some of the later games) were top-down, and the original control scheme didn't involve an attack button; instead you had to ram enemies from the back or side so that they took damage and you didn't. The remake gives you the option of keeping that control scheme, or adding an attack button and the ability to damage enemies from the front. I opted for that. What didn't change is that the game still requires impressive amounts of grinding (particularly for an action/adventure game) and is punishingly hard. I'm playing on "Very Easy" mode, which means that most normal enemies are unlikely to instant-kill me and I can beat most bosses in three or four tries if I'm properly leveled. I'm not sure what kind of maniac the game's Hard mode was made for, but it ain't me.
Overall, the nostalgia value and series completeness is most of the reason to play the game, unless you're really into disturbingly hard Zelda-style top-down games. The plot is interesting and moderately involved (and there are actually recurring characters who get vague personalities), but there isn't enough of it to justify the time you have to spend grinding, even on the easiest difficulty setting. (Honestly, I think the difficulty I'm seeing should be the Easy mode, and "Very Easy" should allow you to blitz through the game in three hours slaughtering everything in your path. Maybe that's just me.) If the pacing of the story picked up about 50%, and there was a little more "go here now" prodding to prevent wandering away from the plot accidentally, it would be quite good.
Still, I think I have the fan translation of Ys IV for the SNES kicking around somewhere; perhaps I'll dig that out. And some Game Genie codes for it.
Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop has some lovely improvements over previous incarnations, and some additions that don't quite work. The stir-fry minigames have been changed so that you need to periodically trace designs, and besides my bizarre inability to draw a five-pointed star, I think it's much more fun than the old version. The new egg-cracking game is more like a rhythm game, which is cute. The new "dicing" game is annoying, as you need to hit colored balls as the knife moves, and the knife tends to speed up in arbitrary ways, making it hard to catch a good rhythm for it. And I have yet to actually succeed at the new stewing game, which involves picking the right ingredient to add from several choices under a very strict time limit, but I welcome that change nonetheless.
The other thing I've noticed is they added a more "forgiving" aspect to a few of the games. The "peel hot" game, in which you need to peel a hot potato before your hand burns, used to fail you if you held the potato too long. Now, you'll toss the potato in the air and have to blow on your hand, but then can catch it and resume, rather than failing the segment entirely.
The game brings back the "Cook with Mama" and "Cook for Friends" sections, and adds a "combination" section where you unlock recipes by combining two ingredients, all of which function pretty much the same as in previous versions and work nicely. The "Shopping" section seems hastily tacked-on--you manuver around a food store, trying to avoid running into other patrons (if you collide, they make you play a mini-game, but there are surprisingly few such games and they're very repetitive) and trying to collect the items on your shopping list. But the way those items spawn is intentionally spread-out and you can't start on the second/third/fourth set of items until you finish the first, so you can't be efficient about your shopping. It was fun for half an hour, but I doubt I'll go back to it.
In general, if you like the Cooking Mama series, this is a fun little time-waster. (For that matter, if you were just getting into the series, I'd probably suggest jumping straight to this one, or at least Cooking Mama 2, since many of the recipes and minigames from the earlier games get repeated.
It's been a very DS weekend. I have Nostalgia and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story to add to my list, too.
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