This is a Wii game. I know, it is impossible to fathom.

Xenoblade Chronicles will finally see its stateside release in April 2012, where it will only be available from GameStop or direct from Nintendo. This game is grandiose and fascinating, but don’t take my word for it—see for yourself in the U.S. reveal trailer (uploaded by IGN).

Deathsmiles has only just come out where I live. For a game first released in 2007, that’s pretty bad going. But to be fair, Dead Island is currently in the spotlight, and I first saw prototype screenshots for that game around about the same time, too. Even four years in development ain’t as bad as Duke, who’s finally arriving in May.

As a citizen of an unimportant country (i.e. any country that isn’t your country), I have found that it has taken a hard toil of petitions and prayer to get Deathsmiles a release here. As an apology for the belated release, the game comes with the complete soundtrack (in WAV format—grr, that means converting and tagging before it can be iPod’d) and a collection of desktop accessories, wallpapers, pointers, and everything else that would have been cool back in 1998, but isn’t now. It’s not much, but it makes me feel loved, even if Europe got a game last, again.

First key thing to note about Deathsmiles is that it’s yet another game in a long line of shooters, a genre so saturated it makes Guitar Hero (God rest its soul) look like a one-shot TV comedy of only six episodes. It’s no joke—there’s a shooter everywhere you go, and Japan’s got it bad; almost every Xbox 360 game that originates from over there is a dating sim, RPG, or shooter. They’re running out of ideas, or rather, they ran out of ideas whilst the Super Famicom was still top-spec.

But being a shooter doesn’t necessarily weigh Deathsmiles down any—it’s just that if you’ve played a lot of shooters recently (like I have), it makes appreciating the little features a very difficult task.

Deathsmiles has a rather interesting storyline. Like many other shooters, the story makes Noby Noby Boy look normal. The story focuses around several young girls who are transported to another world by blinding white flashes of light. The world they travel to, Gilverado, has some kind of phantom feature causing everybody who winds up there to develop magical powers.

There are four playable characters, and as luck would have it, the first character I chose to play as was the weakest. Don’t care, Casper has an awesome name. They all have particular abilities and different types of bomb attacks, which makes playing the game through as each character, which is required to get both endings, relatively painless.

The game consists of six levels (seperated into three chapters), then a fourth chapter, which can usually consist of only one or two stages. Each stage has a single boss, with the exception of bonus stage, Gorge, which has a miniboss part-way through.

While you are playing, you get to choose your difficulty level, indicated as either Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3. As you turn up the difficulty, the enemies spew out more bullets, and that seems to be the only real difference between the settings.

The DLC Japan had to pay for, which is integrated into all releases outside Nippon, adds an extra character (who can only be selected within the new modes that the DLC adds). It also adds an extra stage within the new Mega Black Label modes, with a new boss battle, which can also be played before facing the final level.

Bonus marks go to Deathsmiles for its soundtrack, and its redrawn high-definition sprites in the spruced-up added console modes. Marks are lost, however, due to only the non-background graphics being redrawn, and the game itself  remaining in 4:3 resolution (meaning that to get it full-screen on a HD TV, you need to stretch it).

Deathsmiles does the job, and it fills the occasional half-hour to an hour lust to kill people with laser beams. It offers enough modes to make it  replayable, but as far as games go, this is definitely one you won’t enjoy if you don’t enjoy shooters. If you do, and you can play them as relentlessly as I can, then you pretty much want this game, ’nuff said, really.

I continue to support Cave in the hopes that future games of theirs eventually make it outside of Japan. The upcoming NIN2-JUMP looks like it might be interesting, and like all Live Arcade games, it’s bound to see release across the world. Cave’s first Live Arcade title, Guwange, is well worth a shot if you enjoyed Pocky & Rocky 2, which I have previously implored you to play.

So long as Deathsmiles sees a decent worldwide success, Deathsmiles II: Hell’s Christmas has a pretty good chance of getting a release outside of Japan, too. Double hopefully, this will speed up Otomedius Excellent’s American release and trigger interest in a European release, too. Otherwise, I’ll have to permanently move to Japan.

Tales of Vesperia is more like Tales of Messperia. Namco definitely made a dog’s breakfast of this one. Not to be shot down if you’re a fan of the genre, but also neither to be truly praised for any reason at all. The game is pretty, so if that is all that matters to you (and if it does, I imagine you bought Final Fantasy XIII) then you’ll have fun regardless of the massive nuisances that you will notice whilst playing the game.

Of the forty hours it took me to complete Tales of Why Bother (spread over half of this year), twenty of those hours could have been removed from the game and it would have lost nothing other than side-quests and the moments where characters get all emotional and run away so you have to find them again. Just as the story is starting to pick up, about twenty hours in, it is soon stomped back down to a cinder. Every little meandering section you’re forced to play could have been a side-quest instead, as they just distract from the more important plot points…of which there are almost none. I understand that this is a common theme with JRPGs, but when you’re constantly referring to the in-game story synopsis and the world map to work out where to go, the story obviously doesn’t have the impact it is supposed to. The world map is a totally disheveled mess, too.

As far as role-playing games go, this game is fairly decent, but it could have been better if it ignored more of the RPG traditions that it so shamefully holds onto for deal life (save points, princesses, and whiny little boys who are crap in battle). Getting rid of random battles is a huge breath of fresh air, as are the battle grades and humorous dialogue, which is what results in Tales of Vesperia being worth playing at all if you are an RPG player (although it still will not be of  much interest to those who aren’t). Grinding isn’t all that necessary, too, which is rather welcoming.

Tales of Yipee it’s Another JRPG starts with Yuri Lowell waking up from his sleep. He is a slum-dweller who was once a member of SOLDIER a Royal Knight, until he left them for some reason and decided to live life by his own rules. Now he’s a wanted felon, who lives in the slums and is an unsung hero to the other dwellers. Living life slowly, he dreams of having another adventure; but during all the time that he’s a hero for the others living in the district, his priority is with his people.

One day, the Materia “Blastia” that keeps the slum’s fountain working goes missing, and Yuri is convinced the higher-ups are somehow responsible. Once inside the castle, he meets the princess, except he doesn’t know she’s a princess. Swords clash with an unknown enemy, and the story bursts off from there, occasionally re-appearing every three hours just to see if you’re still paying attention. Usually the plot gets lost between anime stereotypes such as unnatural hair colors or impractical outfits.

If you’re one of these sad and pathetic losers who really, really love anime (because it’s cool to love anime) then this game might be for you. Especially if you think Studio Ghibli are totally the best and you go to cosplay conventions to hide the fact that you live a pointless shameful existence. Then go on, enjoy Tales of Vesperia and put it on your shelf with all the others, in alphabetical order, as you do all your Naruto DVDs.

Less about Japanophiles and more about the game: It feels like the developers gave up half-way through creating this game and used CTRL-C and CTRL-V to make the rest of it. The final dungeon was nowhere near as much trouble as several of the preceding ones. Strapped for time? Maybe they were. The Tales of studio were developing Tales of Vesperia as a trial game, which was only apparent after Namco effectively named the 360 version the “Beta Version.” The Xbox 360 version is nowhere near as complete as the fully remade PlayStation 3 version. Namco failed to tell us at the time that all the Xbox 360 players were fee-paying beta testers, and you can imagine the reaction that came from us players, and the scale of it.

Neither is paying for a beta.

In the PS3 version, two new playable characters are added: Patty Fleur and Flynn Schizo. Namco, what kind of stunt is this? Why are there two empty character spaces at the final boss battle on the Xbox 360 version, which are now filled by these two characters? You pulled a stunt like this, and a stunt like Nightmare Train, so I don’t even want to know you anymore.

For these reasons alone you should really boycott this series now if you weren’t already. If you were, then kudos to you for already realizing that every game in the series is the same damn game. No wonder the studio announced big losses, and are facing the likelihood of bankruptcy. I’m glad that it isn’t just good studios (like Cing) that go bankrupt.

If you’ve played any installment of the Tales of series, then you’re probably already aware that the battles are fought similar to a regular fighting game, set on a two-dimensional plane. It makes a very nice break from the turn-based shite that plagues the RPG genre, but it has been in every Tales of game since the first one. It gives nothing to the game that we didn’t already have in Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Destiny, Tales of Eternia, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Versus or Tales of My Ass.

If there’s one thing that’s terribly hard to fault, it’s the overall presentation. We know that this is Xbox 360 from the smoother frame-rates, the high-definition visuals and the crisp audio quality. There has been no skimping on the graphical side whatsoever. The cel-shading goes a long way to help hide some of the low poly-counts here and there. All menu interfaces are clean with changeable fonts. The graphics are incredible—the kind of cel-shaded and luscious painted effect that was used in Another Code R, and similar to Valkyria Chronicles.

The soundtrack is the best part of the whole game. Why such a charming soundtrack (one that can easily be described as “full of life”) can be written for such a terrible game leads me to question the existence of an all-loving God, because He wouldn’t do this to me! The battle themes get consistently better with each act of the story, piling on more of that “experience” and “growing up” feeling you get during a role-playing game.

And the voice-acting is reasonable. My favorite characters (Yaegar, Rita and Raven) are all voiced very well, with accents that suit their character and appearance. Yuri Lowell’s voice acting is almost perfect. Troy Baker provides Yuri’s voice, but has more recently been the voice of Snow Villiers in Final Fantasy XIII, which is another good RPG for those who aren’t interested in having any storyline whatsoever.

So, the problems? Well, other than being a bloody beta version wrapped up in a fancy box? The lack of story, really, and the lack of creativity. A lot of the time, the characters don’t get up to much, and although they develop, it’s like they still think the sun shines out of each other’s asses. The characters are lovable and the story is held together mostly by them, especially when you’re really lost as to where to go. The skits are funny and come at regular intervals, but they’re not enough to redeem the game from its massive problems.

It’s got soul, charm and appeal, but it’s also got just about every trait characteristic of RPGs that I just can’t stand. Tales of Vesperia is the kind of game that only the hardcore JRPG audience will really enjoy fully. There are good characters and great moments, but they exist amidst the dull hum-drum that only the serious players can withstand.

Tales of Vesperia is hard to recommend, because it is the gaming equivalent of singing silly a capellas on YouTube. All I can truly say is “download the demo off of Xbox Live.” Get a feel for that fighting engine. Then, if you like it THAT much, don’t buy it for any sort of hefty price. Bargain bin or borrow from one of your mates, that’s fine. It isn’t awful but…damn, it could have been so much better, if the story tried a little harder!

I’ll tempt whatever I want, thanks, and not because you told me not to. I do what I want, when I want, and right now, I want to review Dragon Warrior IV.

One of you may remember my review of the original Dragon Warrior. (Thanks for always reading my reviews, Mom!) When I was naught but the littlest of dudes, Dragon Warrior appealed to the dragon warrior within me. I would go out in the yard and find a stick and act out my favorite scenes from the game. Like, hitting things with a stick. Or, walking. Or, standing on stairs and having to enter the menu in order to climb them.

There would always be a little dragon warrior deep inside me, hidden away as I moved on to other games and other systems. The Super Nintendo was released, and with it came Final Fantasy II. And, in the midst of hitting things with sticks, walking, and climbing stairs without having to enter the menu for once, guys, I was suddenly taken back!

Dragon Warrior IV was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

More than a year after the Super Nintendo had come out.

The controls were still awful. The graphics were straight out of 1989. And, why was I playing on a Nintendo that was very much not Super?! My 6-year-old brain could hardly comprehend the sheer implications!

Despite all reason toward the contrary, a little piece of me was overjoyed at the sight of another Dragon Warrior. Sure, I still had to enter the menu to talk to anyone, open doors, inspect things, or breathe. Yes, dealing with NPCs was worse than reading YouTube comments. But, I could climb stairs without entering the menu. That in itself somehow made everything else all right.

In the same vein as later Mega Man games, I could forgive graphics for being sub-par for such a late NES game. Rather, that is, I can forgive them. At the time, I forgave them because I was an easy-to-please six-year-old and lacked the understanding that they were just being lazy. The game looks essentially the same as the original Dragon Warrior, but when has Dragon Warrior ever exceeded expectations?

1992, that’s when. Dragon Warrior IV set itself apart from other games of its era with its story. While hardly and epic comparable to Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, or Chrono Trigger, it contained a number of features unique for its time.

Half of the game is spent before you even meet the hero, a fact that lead to much confusion and resetting of the game for my six-year-old self as the first character you play doesn’t have the name you just entered. Four groups head through their own storylines explaining how they come together. I always found this part to be incredibly fun, as most games waste all of the character development early on, both in terms of story and of leveling. Playing each group individually extends that golden period before arriving at the late-level grind-fest that plagues RPGs to this day. While not entirely avoided, Dragon Warrior IV manages to put it off further than most games, at a time when the grind-fest was an industry-certified method of increasing play time.

Another unique feature was the surprisingly varied gameplay throughout the game. My favorite part will always be playing the merchant, buying and selling equipment to NPC shoppers. There’s also a casino with a number of minigames, a feature that became popular in later RPGs. While large portions of the game still revolved around extensive mashing of the A button, the inclusion of something else to do was a shock at the game’s release.

The final chapter of the game allowed for changing out party members on the fly—something I don’t remember seeing before or again until Final Fantasy VI. The tactical system used to control party members after that point was a little odd, but I’ll accept that in trade for being able to choose whoever I want to be in my party. The uncontrolled characters would regularly use odd skills or actions, which could potentially be annoying, but if Kingdom Hearts can get away with that, I’ll let it slide for ol’ DW4.

TL;DR? Fine. Let me break it down for you. That’s right, Paul Franzen, I’m bringing back the component scores, and there’s nothing you can do about it! Except, perhaps, edit this section out. But, hopefully, you won’t do that. Have I ever told you how much I like writing for GameCola?

Fun: 6—I’ve always enjoyed this game. While there’s plenty of grind-fest and A-mashing, there’s enough going on in the game to mix it up and keep it on the fun side.

Novelty: 6—Beneath the veneer of a generic JRPG hides an actual generic JRPG, but with a hint of creativity. It’s no Katamari Damacy, but it did introduct a few features that would become popular in later games.

Audio: 7—Dragon Warrior IV actually has some of my favorite music for the NES. The Dragon Warrior series has a clean and simple styling to its music that makes it memorable and recognizable. The music is pretty much the only “Good” aspect of the game.

Visuals: 4—The graphics, on the other hand, are essentially the same as they’ve always been for Dragon Warrior. The enemy graphics during battle help keep this score from being lower, but there is little to impress the player during most of the game.

Controls: 2—A game for the menu-lover in all of us.

Replay: 5—While I’ve played the game through a number of times, there’s not much different in any given play. It’s about what you’d expect from a JRPG.

Overall: 5—Better than the original Dee-Dub, at least. While there’s quite a bit going for it, with new features and creative AI, Dragon Warrior IV is held back by essentially being a mod of the original game. I guess that never held Mega Man back, but at least Mega Man was a good game to begin with. Like baseball, this game will have trouble holding the attention of the modern gamer, but unlike baseball, I’d say it’s worth playing at least once.

Sigh. I can’t even write a controversial review, anymore. Where’s Meteo when you need him? I’ll never get Employee of the Year, again.

Won't you help little pixel art spaceship find a home?

Yes, Retro Game Challenge received a bit of praise here and there for its originality and charm, but it otherwise came and went with little fanfare—unless you count the sound of the publisher whining about the disappointing sales. But you can hardly be blamed for this: based on the packaging alone, the game looks like just another retro compilation. I mean, let’s face it, we’ve all had this experience with retro compilations: you play the few good games once or twice, but then never touch it again because your friends are too cool to play 2-player Bubble Bobble with you so you can get the “Happy End.”

Ah, but therein lies the catch: Retro Game Challenge is not a compilation of retro games, but rather a compilation of fake retro games. “Demake” isn’t quite the right word, and “retromake” is too obvious. I was leaning toward “submake” or “pseudomake,” but the Wikipedia article on English prefixes has led me to settle on “megalomake” as the most awesome option, if not necessarily the most suitable. Retro Game Challenge is thus a unique collection of megalomakes wrapped up in a quirky and engaging presentation. One could perhaps even say that it is not so much a collection of retro-styled games as it is a game about retro-styled games, but since this isn’t an academic term paper I will refrain from posting several pages of bullshit for the sake of word count.

Hey, you got story in my retro compilation!

Regardless of what we call it, the game goes to great lengths to recapture the retro experience of the 80s. Rather than the usual straightforward “Game Select” menu, you’re treated to a storyline involving time travel, a floating polygonal head, and the dull mediocrity of a lonely friendless childhood. Each game comes with a correctly proportioned in-game manual that you are free to never read. As you complete challenges, you receive issues of GameFan magazine with tips, secrets, reviews, and the latest info about upcoming fake releases. Commentary is provided by the kid sitting next to you, who shouts such well-known 80s catchphrases as “Whoa,” “Dude,” and the ever popular “Look out.” His mom even yells at you to stop playing videogames all day, and you, of course, ignore her. The only element missing from the experience is the giant purple blotch in the upper-left corner of the screen where my brothers and I used to press magnets against the TV.

The games themselves are pulled from a mish-mash of genres, and can be described through reference to other well-known 8-bit classics. Cosmic Gate is Galaga with the addition of…wait, no, it’s pretty much just Galaga. Robot Ninja Haggle Man is similar to Ninja JaJaMaru-kun, with which will you undoubtedly be familiar if you were one of the suckers who were taken in by the enticing “IMPORT” tag on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. Rally King is a clone of that bitchin’ awesome Micro Machines game that the kid down the street owned, and Rally King SP is a slightly more difficult palette swap with the addition of product placement billboards. Star Prince is a decent vertically-scrolling shmup, and Haggle Man 2 is Haggle Man with oversized stages and a billion enemies everywhere. Up to this point, it’s a nice variety of quick, satisfying, pick-up-and-play gameplay.

FUN: Haggle Man, Rally King, and Star Prince.

BOOOOOORING: Guadia Quest.

But this brings us to the two biggest games, which are simultaneously Retro Game Challenge’s central showpieces and its greatest downfalls. Guadia Quest is a fan favorite for reasons that I cannot fathom: it’s just a turn-based JRPG from the Dragon Quest “wander and grind” school of design. I managed to slog through the mind-rendingly dull entirety of Dragon Quest II, and yet even I ended up using Guadia Quest’s secret “skip to the credits” cheat as soon I learned about it. To be fair, it’s actually pretty good as far as boring turn-based JRPGs go, but it just feels out of place: I was left feeling that a Zelda or Crystalis clone could have filled the epic fantasy niche while being less disruptive to the flow. All of the other games that make up Retro Game Challenge are like zippy little cars zooming down the highway; Guadia Quest is the bloated corpse of a giant squid that drops from the sky and brings traffic to a screeching halt. (Lay off; that is a damned fine squid-based metaphor.)

Oh god, the 90s draw near!

Finally, Haggle Man 3 finishes off the compilation, breaking from the long tradition established by the previous two fake titles in the series. With a release date just on the cusp of the 90s, the character design accordingly shifts from cute and super-deformed to an edgier style, but is softened by a greater social awareness as evidenced through the inclusion of such characters as “Haggleman Lady.” The gameplay has likewise evolved, and is now a clone of a game that people have actually played: Ninja Gaiden. Unfortunately, Haggle Man 3 suffers from some of the same problems as Guadia Quest: it’s just too long and tedious compared to the rest of the compilation (although at least it’s action-packed tedium this time around rather than “Jam A to get through every battle” tedium).

It may sound like I had a negative experience with some of the individual games, but Retro Game Challenge is more than the sum of its parts. This is often code for “The game actually sucks but I’m trying to avoid saying s0,” but it really is true in this particular case. Most of the games are reasonably fun reinterpretations of classic favorites, but there’s also a lot of entertainment to be had in the gaps between games: the Bart Simponesque fake names in the “Letters to the Editor” section in GameFan, the prophetic jokes about the sequelitis that will one day plague the industry, or the repeated pushing-back of the release date for Guadia Quest.

Indeed.

Retro Game Challenge was clearly made by people who remember the retro experience, warts and all. It’s a worthwhile nostalgia trip for $20 (as of the time of this review). And hey, even once the nostalgia wears off, you still might play Star Prince at least once or twice more before sticking it on the shelf with the rest of your retro compilations.

Yeah, it’s pretty good.

…

What are you still doing here? Show’s over, buddy; I’ve got stuff to do.

Oh, that’s right; I’ve got to tell a bunch of dick jokes to explain why you should buy this game, right.

My relationship with Japanese role-playing games has been a changeable one. When I was younger I spent countless hours watching my androgynous avatar’s levels rise in disproportion to my social life. But as I grew older and less retarded, I came to realize that I would sooner eat coal and try to shit diamonds than play another moment of Final Fantasy X. I’m honestly not even sure why I played them in the first place; most JRPGs follow a boy of questionable sexuality  joining up with a childhood friend, a retard, a silent lone ranger, a girl retard, a cat girl, and an honor-bound warrior whom band together to defeat the dark lord Arnold and discover frienship while using the heart of the cards and NYYAAARRRGG! UNCLEAN! MUST WASH AWAY THE HORRIBLE PLOTS!

So when a friend of mine told me of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, a JRPG that actually had a good storyline and gameplay that required that oh-so-undervalued muscle known as the brain, I was a bit skeptical. In fact, I’d be more likely to believe that leprechauns exist, gerbils ruled the world, or there’s a Joss Wedon show that lasted longer than two seasons.

But after beating the game, I can safely say that Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is weird.

It’s great. But really weird.

The story revolves around you (yes, you) as a Japanese high school student who goes to visit his teacher in the hospital with two of his school buddies. When you get there, you find out that there’s a cult trying to start a supernatural event called “The Conception” which will result in the end of the world as we know it.  So with the help of your friends you must band together with an unlikely group of renegade cult members, one of them being a catgirl for some reason, to save the world and learn the true meaning of Christmas all in the process. Hooray!

Well, that last part doesn’t quite go the way I described it. There are no renegade cult members, no catgirls, and you don’t so much save the world as you go to the top of the hospital and watch it all blow up.

Yeah.

You soon find yourself in an alternate reality Tokyo, one that is entirely populated by demons, and, I’m not kidding, Lucifer himself turns you into a demon for reasons unknown, and you move around this dystopian world attempting to find out where your friends are, what the hell is going on, and maybe return everything back to normal.

To me, this whole concept almost seems like a parody of most JRPG conventions. Your character goes into the final dungeon and gets face to face with a guy who can only be described as the final boss of any regular JRPG, not as a stalwart hero of the land, but as a dumbass high school student who got lost from his tour guide group. Hell, your freaking teacher has to come in and save your ass, an event that could have only been more pussy if she turned out to be your mum, too.

The story is open and ambiguous throughout the whole game; at first, you’re simply trying to get your feet wet, but soon you’re investigating subtle metaphors for humanity and religion that put most other JRPG storylines—”gather up a group of unlikely heroes to take on the evil empire of whatever”—to shame. A lesser man might just assume he or she is just trying to save his or her friends and “restore the world,” but the story becomes more sinister as you play. The game also has multiple endings depending on what you do through the game, and without giving out major spoilers, they are all freaking badass. This game sits in the back of the bus wearing a bandanna, where androgynous teenagers don’t venture for fear of getting shanked.

The first thing you’ll notice when playing SMT: Nocturne is “This seems a hell of a lot like Pokémon!” Yes, the game does have you collect monsters in order to battle larger monsters, but unlike his prepubescent counterpart who loves to force monsters into captivity so he can pit them against each other in bloody, super-powered dog fights, the main character in Nocturne takes the diplomatic approach to raising his army. When you encounter a demon, you have a chance of actually talking to them and asking if they want to join your team, or want a cup of coffee, or how the weather is, and they could answer “Yes,” “Yes,” and “The huge orb of apocalyptic death is shining brightly today. The weather is the least of my fucking worries!” It’s also worth mentioning that the main character is actually usable in combat, meaning you can actually have him punch out monsters, which would have made Pokémon so much better if you could actually kick an Abra in the head instead of dicking around with Pokéballs.

AAAANNNGGSSST PUUUUNNCH!

Another thing I like about this system is that it makes the demons seem more human, if that makes any sense. Sometimes when you encounter a monster he just wants to talk. Seriously. Or sometimes he just wants to give you an item to pass off to his friend that’s in your party. Sometimes they just get bored and wonder off. It’s a hilarious little satire on the JRPG trope of “walking around and killing random wildlife,” because how the hell do you know that huge ass lightning bird wasn’t protecting his nest? What if he was just going for a stroll when you started to throw fire at him? What the hell is wrong with you people?! By this logic, Tidus should be considered an environmental hazard worse than nuclear waste.

The monsters you can get in the game are pretty epic, most of them largely resembling mythological creatures from various cultures, such as Greek gods and Japanese oni, among many others. They are all beautifully designed, and they even have distinctive personalities that set them apart from each other. They definitely beat out the pussy critters from Pokémon, I can tell you that.

On my team I had, no joke, a demon knight, Ares the Greek god of war, a rabbit, a bondage queen angel, and Lucifer. The goddamn devil himself. If that doesn’t interest you, believe me, you have never played a videogame in your life until you see El Diablo deliver a flying elbow drop to a magical snowman. Seriously, it can happen in Nocturne. This is probably the biblical equivalent of the whole “My dad can kick your dad’s ass” argument you had when you were a kid. Except replace “Dad” with “Raiden, god of thunder.”

Heaven's new dress code has stirred up a lot of controversy.

The game also sports an extensive monster breeding mechanic that works well, if you can wrap your head around all of the little rules. I had enough inbred multisexual pairings going on to keep Jerry Springer going for years.

But probably the best part about Nocturne is the combat. You don’t just randomly hit the X button until everything dies in front of you; no no, this game requires you to actually use your brain. Each demon, including you, has a set of strengths and weaknesses that can turn the tide of any battle. When you hit a fire monster with an ice spell, you get an extra turn, and an extra chance to dish out the pain. But, if one of your monsters is hit, then the opposing team get more opportunities to blow your ass up. Resistances also play into this too; one wrong move can result in an instant party kill if you’re not careful. I honestly wonder why the hell more JRPGs haven’t done this, because this system actually forces you to use strategy. With the right team, you can win most battles in the first turn, or lose them just as quickly.

Unfortunately, Shin Megami Tensei is not all gumdrops and ice cream. Just like a rose, Nocturne does have its share of thorns that keep it from being the best. Well, not so much thorns as little cannons that fire whenever the game hates you, which is all the time.

The first problem is that Nocturne is hard.

“A hard JRPG? How can that be? Can’t you just do some levelling and try again?”

Well, my answer to that is SHUT UP AND I’LL TELL YOU WHY! The focus on weaknesses is something that, although is helpful, will often work against you just as well. Some of the later bosses don’t have any weaknesses, and as such, have to be beaten the old fashioned way, and God forgive if you have a critter that’s weak against its attacks. Even just one monster that is unfortunate to have a weakness, or even no resistance, to a fire spell can give your opponent enough free moves to do a one-man ass kicking show on your entire team and still have enough time to throw a keg party afterwards. Sometimes a boss will send you back to the drawing board, forcing you to breed a specially trained killer in order to defeat the boss, which will become totally useless in the next area as the monsters there are resistant to his attacks.

Another thing to worry about is that the game hates you.

Seriously, play it enough and you can almost feel the utter distaste for sentient walking meat bags filled with water. Sometimes the game comes to work drunk and decides to take its frustrations out on everyone, manifesting itself as bullshit kills.

There are certain attacks that have a small chance to instantly kill a party member, which are usually known only to specific monsters. And when you suddenly encounter seven of the buggers whom only cast that bloody spell, that small percentage spells instant party death. I could see the game quite literally flipping me off.

Overall, though, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is the greatest game you never played. It’s unfortunate that I found this game much later in life, because if I had found it, I might have turned out much differently. I might have not wasted my time with Final Fantasy X and its ilk, and maybe I wouldn’t have hated JRPGs so much. If you are, or have ever been, a fan of RPGs, you owe it to yourself to pick this up. If you don’t have the money, then kidnap the President’s daughter and hold her for ransom money. It’s the only way.

I, i.e. Lizo, have just finished playing Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, and it seems like a review is in order, mostly because the entirety of GameCola’s coverage of this game consists of “its name is very stupid.” Unfortunately, I’m not very confident in my ability to write funny, and I’m too lazy to actually write my own article, so I’ve enlisted Paul’s help. I’m dictating this review to him, and he’s translating it into hilarity as he types, mostly by inserting the word “nostril” every once in a while.

This game was released a few months ago for the DS as a continuation of/supplement to the Kingdom Hearts saga, which, if you don’t know, is a series of action RPGs that combines the characters and worlds of Disney with the silly haircuts of Square Enix. (And, occasionally, Final Fantasy characters, but that’s not the case with this game.) (Nostril. Hah!!) Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is set in the time period between Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II, and it tells the story of Roxas during his time in Organization XIII. You won’t be able to understand it—or, most likely, this review—if you haven’t played any of the previous titles, or at least, the two main titles. (It’s OK if you didn’t play the GBA-only Chain of Memories; no one else did, either.)

Playing as Roxas, you get to undertake a sequence of missions while working for Organization XIII, meeting the members of the organization and fleshing out the story of Roxas’s life before we first meet him in KHII. The structure of the game basically alternates between completing missions (e.g., killing Heartless, exploring Disney worlds, etc.) and watching cutscenes. You also get to buy new inventory items from a Moogle in-between stages, upgrade your equipment, and synthesize things to make better things from those things. That’s basically the whole game. But that doesn’t mean that the structure is completely predictable—the game actually surprised me quite a few times by tricking me into thinking that I was just going to be doing another mission, same as usual, but then something completely different and entirely plot-driven would happen instead.

There’s also a multiplayer mode, which I only played for about 10 minutes before giving up on because it was so lame. In this mode, you basically just re-play all of the missions that you’ve already done before, and only one player gets to keep any of the earned items and experience. It’s kind of like Fable II’s multiplayer mode, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The one bonus is that you get to play as characters other than Roxas, which only really counts as a bonus until you realize that all the other characters are also members of Organization XIII, whose inclusion—if I may be blunt—is what heralded the shark-jumping of the Kingdom Hearts series. [Lizo would like you to know, at this point, that most of that last sentence was written by Paul and is no way indicative of her opinion.]

The music is taken entirely from the two big-people-console games, so, while the quality is great, there’s nothing really new or interesting there. As an added audio bonus, though, there are about ten lines of spoken dialogue in the pre-rendered high-res cutscenes, and they actually got the original voice actors to reprise their roles. Seriously! I know it’s hard to believe that Haley Joel Osment didn’t have anything better to do than record dialogue for a portable videogame, but there you go. Also: Christopher Lee, which is a little more impressive.

The controls are a little wonky, at least at first. Basically, there aren’t enough buttons on the DS to handle this game, and you end up having to scroll through too many menus and press too many buttons just to use a potion in the heat of battle. There are some hotkeys, which is extremely useful, but, again, it all takes some getting used to.

In lieu of any sort of transition, I’m going to skip now to a bulleted list of reasons why you would or would not like this game.

Reasons Why You Would Like Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days:

• You’ve played the two main-series games and really want to learn more about Roxas and/or Organization XIII. The developers did a great job tying this game into the main story and making it feel like a KH story. Taken by itself, the plot isn’t phenomenal, but in concert with the rest of the series, it helps fill in a lot of the blanks and makes the whole story better. For instance, if you’ve played Chain of Memories (which no one did), then you get to see another side of those events, as this game takes place parallel to that one for a bit. Also, at the very end of this game, you get to actually play the bonus ending of the original Kingdom Hearts—you know, the super-secret-you-only-saw-it-on-YouTube-because-it-was-too-much-work-to-unlock ending. It works perfectly and is totally awesome.
• It’s pretty hefty and has a ton of stuff to do, especially for a portable game (and even compared to some console games). I played for about 30 hours, and I hardly did any of the extra stuff, like all of the challenge versions of the missions (which are different from the aforementioned multiplayer versions), synthesizing items, finding hidden treasure chests, unlocking secret characters for multiplayer mode, etc. If you’re a completionist, you could easily spend double the amount of time I spent on this game.
• There is no Gummi Ship.
• The game takes advantage of the Dual Screen’s dual screens in ways that are inventive and critical to the story but don’t force you to use the touchscreen in annoying ways.
• Riku is awesome.

Reasons Why You Would Not Like Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days:

• You haven’t played any of the other KH games. This game will probably make no sense and be kinda boring if you don’t know any of the rest of the story.
• You think that games should have names that you can pronounce.
• There aren’t any new Disney worlds in this game. Remember how annoying it was in KHII when a third of the worlds were repeats of worlds from the first game? All of the worlds in 358/2 Days are repeats. To be fair, though, I wasn’t really expecting anything new, seeing as this is more of a supplementary game, and Chain of Memories didn’t have any new worlds, either.

So basically, I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game. It was a bit longer than I thought it had to be, but it was engaging all the way through. Also, after playing it, now I kind of really want to play the upcoming PSP KH game, Birth by Sleep. Unfortunately, I don’t own a PSP, and since there’s nothing else on the PSP that I want to play, that probably won’t be happening. Anyway, if you like KH and you don’t think Organization XIII was the complete and total ruination of the series, you should check this game out!

Nostril.

Even still, a weird-west, steampunk Dragon Warrior of this magnitude doesn’t come around often.

Back in May, I played through Wild Arms 2, which… well, the nicest way I can put it is that it wasn’t a great use of my time. It had all the makings of a pretty damn good Final Fantasy knockoff, except it was more trouble than it was worth. It plays close to Lufia II, except it doesn’t have Lufia II’s simple and lubricated design. It was neatly filled out and occasionally complicated. The graphics were almost unwatchable, and trying to traverse the overworld was more difficult than the simile I’m trying to make to accurately and comically describe it.

So you’re sitting there, cock in hand, reading the afore-paragraph and thinking “Hey! Why don’t you get to reviewing THIS game?” and now reading “Hey, these same things could be said about this game, just to a slightly less extent.”

Sho’nuff. I had really high hopes for Wild Arms 3. The graphics are still very simple but much more friendly on screen. The sound seems to have improved, too, and the game has one of the best airship themes I’ve ever heard. But ultimately, I didn’t end this game with a big smile on my face.

It started off well enough. A good old-fashioned wild west Mexican standoff on a train between four characters. Then you get to go back and look at what brought them there. There’s the young girl who wants to fly on prayer wings packing two pistols. There’s the nice-guy sniper who represents the Egon of the group. There’s the bandit with a machine gun who just wants the loot, and then there’s the Native American shaman with a sawed-off shotgun who’s surprisingly useless in battle.

Basically, this game is just a wild west Dragon Warrior. That’s what it eventually boils down to. No new characters from there, diminishing gold and experience reserves, and gaming rules that are just unnecessary. For example, you will not find the area you seek until someone gives you a clue where it’s at (less often than you really need), then you have to go out and metal detect for it while you fight a five to six minute battle every four seconds of walking. You do not get new weapons; you only get to abysmally upgrade them for outrageous prices. Magic’s almost useless, too, except for one spell you’ll abuse harder than a two-headed stepchild.

This game does have its good points…which I’ll get to whenever I quit bitching. One of the things that bothered me the most was how quickly it shed the whole wild west thing and became just another RPG reaching out into space and the past and across dimensions in the same sentence. I was NOT a fan of having to fight the same guys more than seven times. I WAS a fan of saving whenever I wanted inside of dungeons. I was NOT a fan of the overworld in this game. I WAS a fan of horseback turn-based battles….

The polarizing list goes on. The game itself is not bad; it’s just not what it could’ve been if a few damn things would’ve been fixed. I know J-RPGs are supposed to be pretty hardcore, but c’mon.

I’ll give Wild Arms 3 some major points for innovation and finding new ways to represent the dungeons and battles. You get to have tank battles at one point. One dungeon had me go deep inside it to retrieve a cursed item and had me make it outside with only 1 HP. That was surprisingly cool. A lot of the boss battles are pretty creative and even fun sometimes, but mostly they require too much to really be fun. The last boss in particular is a hard-ass, but you have to admire what it is you’re actually fighting.

Basically, if you like a lot of Zelda and Lufia puzzles and have 60 hours that you’re just going to waste lying in bed trying to find a reason to get up like I’m doing about 30 years too early, then go ahead and play it. Keep an FAQ and a map nearby so you actually have a chance of completing the game.

“Take care and tempt not the fates.“

One of the first videogames I ever played was Dragon Warrior. Somehow, at four years old, I managed to enjoy the game. I suppose that, when I could barely read, the story seemed pretty interesting. It probably helped that I could fill in the massive plot holes and incredibly boring gameplay through the power of my imagination, and I did like knights and dragons and stuff when I was a little dood.

However, now that I am an adult, I can see the game for the terrible lack of effort that it is. Every aspect of the game had already been produced elsewhere, and the only credit it should be given is for pioneering the horrible frontiers of JRPGs. If it weren’t for Dragon Warrior, there might have actually been some creativity in Japanese role-playing games.

Well, OK, it’s likely that the Japanese RPG scene would have turned out the same, even without Dragon Warrior. Uncreative is to Japanese RPGs what incredibly boring and overly complicated are to Western RPGs. And, if all JRPGs lack creativity, and all JRPGs are from Japan, does all of Japan lack creativity? Given how many games Nintendo has made with the same characters, I’d be inclined to say “yes.” But we’re getting off topic.

The point is, Dragon Warrior never really became that popular in the West, and for good reason. The only reason I ever enjoyed it was because I was an overly imaginative child who lacked the reading capability to fully understand that the dialogue was idiotic. Despite all of this, the game is legendary in Japan, and two decades later, we’re still being flooded with copies using the same fundamentals. It’s kind of like Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. George Lucas knew how much money he could make off of the Star Wars franchise, and even though his earlier attempt to revive the series was mediocre, he figured that if he kept trying to cash in on the success of the originals, he’d break even at some point.

But, again, we’re getting off topic.

Dragon Warrior has barely average graphics for its day. The battle graphics and monsters are pretty good, but the map design and tiles are terrible. All of the maps look flat, and everything is separated into single-block chunks, which makes the world map look ridiculous. And when you first start the game and are greeted by a king running in place on a brick floor, surrounded by carpet samples, in a room that seems to be encased in that bumpy, grey foam stuff that they pack computer parts in, you can basically guess what the rest of the game is going to be like.

The music actually isn’t too bad, however. It was mostly decently composed, and it has a clean sound to it, although there are the requisite ear-bleeding tunes thrown in to meet release standards. Overall, it is pretty much on par with other games of the time.

In general, the game is barely average for is time. Sure, it was the first RPG released on the NES, but that’s like saying that Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy on the PlayStation. Many better games were released before it—the only thing it had going for it was that it was the first on that specific system. It merely collected aspects found in other games and put them together into one mediocre blob. Or, I guess it would be a slime, in this case. Lelelelele!

The one thing truly bad about this game is its controls. In order to interact with any object, you have to enter into a menu. It’s kind of like Earthbound, except that people like that game for some reason, even when they complained about the same problem in Dragon Warrior. Either way, as in Earthbound, this is especially annoying when you walk up to someone and try to talk to them, as they have a tendency to walk away from you, forcing you to close the menu, walk over to where they moved, and try again. Worse than Earthbound’s, however, this menu also includes options such as “Door” and “Stairs,” meaning that you have to enter the menu for every single possible interaction in the game.

There are other minor annoyances, as well. For example, button presses are only polled once or twice every second. This means that tapping a button will not achieve the desired result. You have to hold the button down until the game registers that it is being pressed. If you hold the button down, however, it may register twice and send you too far or enter you into another menu. A small problem, but considering the rest of the game, all of the little problems add up.

So, overall, the game isn’t very fun. The vague story is drawn out over tedious and poorly defined sidequests, requiring you to slowly traverse the gameworld, fighting random battles every step of the way. And, as if there aren’t enough random battles to begin with, much of the game is spent seeking them out in order to level up or buy equipment. Not a lot has changed in the world of JRPGs.

Even so, the game had an effect on me at that age. Like Curse, or one of those other status effects that lasts between battles and you only get rid of it by going back to town, and you try going to the inn and find out that the inn doesn’t cure it, so you have to find the town that actually has a priest, and by that time, the character is dead. It’s a lot like that, really.

But, for as bad of a game as it is, it forever determined my choices in gaming. While I can’t stand to play the game anymore, I still have a fetish for JRPGs. The more generic and cliché, the better! And I blame it all on Dragon Warrior. My first RPG. How sad.