Review: Ar tonelico III

Ar tonelico III: Sekai Shuuen no Hikigane wa Shoujo no Uta ga Hiku
Platform: PS3
Genre: RPG
Playtime: 35:35 on True End path, add on ~3 hours for Bad/Normal ends
Blew through this in just over a week...

Gameplay: 7/10 Even though it's the same rating, I feel as if it's a step down from AT2's system. Jumping has returned, but field magic is still gone. Well, lots of things are gone. Each RT only has one spell per personality, and those personalities also replace the costumes that up stats. Hymma are added to the songs to give buffs to the vanguard, but aren't as special as the IPDs from 2. Item creation is like AT1's system, but costs DP to do, which gets annoying early on when you're short on DP (endgame it's fine because you have too much AGAIN).
Battle is a step down -- it's mostly mashing square until you can purge your RT to level up her magic. Vanguards do pathetic damage -- I was just breaking 300 a hit on weaker enemies at endgame, so get used to seeing the magic casting spells over and over and over again. And enemies themselves...weren't that interesting. Poms are only at the start of the game very briefly, and then it's generic robots and other plant things. Each area doesn't really have it's own set of enemies, once you're in phase 4 you'll be seeing the same pear-vine and robot things in every area.
Dunno where else to put this, but the world felt really small compared to the other games.

Story: null No rating due to me not being fluent in Japanese. It's not the same if I rated it based on other people's opinions/writings of what happens anyway.

Characters: 9/10 Even though the party was dropped from 8 people to 6, this gives every character a chance to have plot based around them. The most useless character seemed to be Hikari Gojyou, but only really because Aoto is the main character, and Cocona is special already. We finally get a playable Origin back in Tilia, and I have to say, she has the most personality out of the three Origins. Saki and Finnel hold their own in the end, but by the end game, it's mostly about helping Tilia with her project (at least, from what I could get)

Graphics: 7.5/10 Well...they LOOK nice, but they could do so much more. The "2D images over a background while people talk with textboxes" from pretty much every other Gust game is back, but falls flat here due to the background images not changing when characters leave, enter, or move in the scene. There could've been so much more done with the 3D models, and some parts scream laziness (like when Aoto is thinking to himself at the end of Phase 2, his mouth loops through an animation over and over) Also, lots of clipping with sleeves and heads into shoulders.
Song magic and EX attacks, which are usually nice to watch, get boring fast because each girl only has one, and each level is just a slight variation on the animation. The Flipsphere attacks are also boring to see because EVERY girl has the same forumla -- small things drop, girl poses, larger thing drops.

Music: 9/10 As usual, Gust delivers with a stellar OST and vocal songs. Favorites are Z, Cosmoflips, and Harmonics Tilia. As for OST songs, the world map theme, the menu/dive shop theme, and a couple of the town themes were good (not Clusternia town theme argh)

Overall Rating: 8/10
Recommendation: If you know Japanese well or are a big enough fan of the series to play through without understanding, go ahead and import this. Otherwise, wait a year and see if we get an English version.

Review: Valkyria Chronicles

Valkyria Chronicles
Platform: PS3
Genre: SRPG
Playtime: 32:31
Stupid January class made me take forever on this, but it still lasted only a month.

Gameplay: 8/10 Like most SRPGs, there's no fancy world map. What we do have is a book as a framing device, and you pick scenes/battles from the book. It gets annoying at times as not all scenes are linked together, and you have to always confirm before you play the scene.
Battle wise, it combines a lot of different views together. Top down map view to choose a unit, third person view to run around with a unit, and then a closer, near first person view when you're shooting things. The camera gets screwy sometimes, which blows when you're trying to move a unit as best as possible with the limited AP (basically running power) that they have.
It gets points knocked off for some tough enemy AI early on, especially with snipers, and endgame, when a scout rush is the solution to nearly every battle.

Story: 9/10 Hoo boy, I'm a sucker for this story. It's very much an anime plot (not like the anime got it right though), but I loved it. Love, hatred, wins, losses...yeah, okay. Son of a hero Welkin, his sister Isara, and their new friend Alicia end up drafted into the Gallian militia to fight in the Second Europan War against the Empire. Mix in some magical girls and you've got the basic plot of the game. The story is pretty well paced, with each chapter in the book being a major event. It gives you a couple plot twists in the middle, leaving enough time for it all to be resolved in the end.

Characters: 9/10 There's two "types" of characters in this game, the important playable characters the story revolves around, and the LPCs, or lesser playable characters. The LPCs are the units that join your squad who can permadie. Now, in most SRPGs, you take a blank slate and use them and they stay a blank slate. VC is different because each unit has their own backstory and personality. You really get attached to the characters and end up using favorites, sometimes even if their skills are bad. I personally got real attached to Lynn and Nadine (and of course cameo characters Vyse and Aika!)
As for the main characters, they're all quite unique with strengths and flaws. I'd go into more detail but going into TOO much detail would be major spoilers for a good number of characters. My favorite overall turned out to be Isara >>

Graphics: 9/10 Sega's first use of the CANVAS engine is a good one, giving semi-realistic graphics, but still able to keep a sketchy anime-style look. Shame that the sequel is more styled after the anime, but eh.

Music: 8/10 The first OST by Hitoshi Sakimoto that I've heard, and it was enjoyable. Some of the tracks sound alike, especially the battle themes, though. Also, you'll pretty much hear the same few tracks throughout the game, since you spend more time in certain places than in others. I'd comment about the OP/ED song "No Matter The Distance" but it was cut for the US version...

Localization: 10/10 Probably one of the strongest localizations I've played in a while (though that's not saying much). The JP voice track is included, though the subtitles for scenes match the English track which throws off some lines at points, but I played with English voices so I don't really care that much.

Overall Rating: 8.8 rounded up to a 9/10
Recommendation: One of the PS3 must-buy games, I highly recommend this to any SRPG or JRPG fan, or even someone wanting to try something new. It's only $20 now if you can find it, so why not?

Review: Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis

Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis
Platform: PS2
Genre: RPG
Playtime: 42:12
Beat it exactly one week before MK2's release. Let's go.

Gameplay: 6/10 Do you remember Atelier Iris 3? Well, the controls are exactly the same. Jump button, slashing button, dungeons that you run through multiple times to get into deeper areas that gets annoying FAST.
Instead of a quest based system, there's a class based system...which is about the same thing. You take a class, you get the assignment, you do it, and time marches on. In Free Time (if you got enoug units), you can take Jobs -- fetch quests or beat-up-monster quests -- which is the best way to get money in the game. And you'll need a lot of money to do alchemy.
Alchemy hasn't changed much either. Expect to do a lot of running back and forth between your workshop and the athanor (equipment making place) to get all the items. You get recipes from the field and boss fights, but can also do derivation to make new items (like using a different type of stone to get a different colored steel). The difference from AI3 is with the element wheel that determines the level and added effects of the item. It's easy to get down, though, even though you don't always want the level at 100. Character's stats are completely determined by alchemy by way of the Grow Book -- think of the Sphere Grid from FFX and you've got the same idea.
The battle system is 95% identical to Atelier Iris 3, save for the Finishing Bursts, Variable Strikes, and attack/defense support from the backline characters. Enemies are also on screen in the same types of blobs as AI3, and yes, I still avoided them too often.

Story: 6/10 Vayne and his mana, Sulpher, get to go to Al-Revis Academy for alchemy, and they meet lots of weird people there as they go through their three years of school. That's about it until you get about 35 hours in and learn that Vayne isn't really normal. The story is VERY slow moving, and there's no real bigbad until the very end of the game. They hide the plot points from you, trying to add mystery, but it ended up annoying me more than anything. JUST TELL ME ALREADY, ISOLDE.

Characters: 8/10 Unlike AI3, there's a lot of characters with their own personality quirks. Jess is a girl that blows up things with a sad past, Nikki is a hyperactive catgirl who wants lots of babies, Flay thinks he's a superhero and he also flunks all his classes, Roxis is the random rival, Anna is the loli with a crazy imagination, Pamela is a ghost, and Muppy is an alien. The NPCs don't get much backstory except for Isolde, so there's no problem like AI3 had with that. During free time you can also do character quests -- completing one person's is necessary for the good ending, but if you get As in every class, you'll have enough free time to have every ending available at endgame. These character quests add more personality to the characters, though there's sometimes a bit of an AT1 problem where things that happen in the character quests are never mentioned in the main story.
Voices were good all around. Hello Liam O'Brien doing someone who isn't evil and bishy, for once. Stephanie Sheh returns as Nikki, and she's not annoying and crazy high pitched! Anna's voice, whoever it was, is a bit too low for a 12-year-old...not like Anna really LOOKS 12 anyway.

Graphics: 7.5/10 2D Gust RPG, blah blah blah. I knocked off a half-point because it reuses a lot of stuff from AI3 :B

Music: 8/10 Lots of catchy songs and good battle themes. Each character even has their own theme!

Localization: 7/10 As a pre-AT2 NISA localization, it's good. There's a few awkward lines (Orgasmic bomb property?), and sometimes the text boxes get one word looking lonely on a line. I don't remember many spelling/grammar errors. The worst part is that only 60% or so of the game is voiced in English. The character quests aren't voiced at all, and many of the shopkeepers don't have voices. At least important story scenes kept their voices.

Overall Rating: 7/10
Recommendation: If you like Gust's RPGs, but want something a bit different. This is still more on the side of a typical JRPG, but the fact that alchemy/item crafting determines your stats pushes it more towards what an older Atelier game is probably like. It's also the longest out of the four Atelier games currently released in the US (though MK2 is out next week and is longer...)

Review: Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica

Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica
Platform: PS2
Genre: RPG
Playtime: 65:07
This only took a month longer than it should have.

Gameplay: 7/10 Still very much like the first AT game, minus some mechanics like Green field magic and jumping. Maps are also the same select an area that you can run through type of thing. Diving is also the same, though you can only go all the way (heh) with one girl, which makes it a lot more realistic.
Dualstall is an interesting level up system, even if in the end it makes your Reyvateils very overpowered (mine were level 96). It can be annoying redoing it to get the effects you want, since the movement in the bath is random.
Battles were changed too, of course, to a more action-oriented style like Valkyrie Profile. It kept me awake during those long IPD hunting sections, but again, it gets too easy by end game when you have Guard ++++ equipped and are firing off dual magic.
I probably forgot something here that's not important XD

Story: 8/10 Taking a break from the typical "save the world from a bad guy" plot, this time we're saving the world by trying to make new land. Of course there's a zillion obstacles in the way. The story isn't about Croix, the player character, but Cloche and Luca, two of the girls that travel with him. More and more RPGs seem to be doing this recently, FF12 being one that sticks out in memory. Even the final bosses are very different, following in the footsteps of AT1.

Characters: 8/10 Speaking of following AT1, Jakuri is THE best character in the game, nearly as complex, if not more so than Cloche and Luca. Croix is there as your main guy and the guy who holds up the girls. Cloche is stuck up and tsundere, Luca is the childhood dorodere friend, and Cocona is the cute little sister. Add in the cool Jakuri and we've got every cliche covered. The other playables, Amarie, Leglius, and Shun fall to the wayside, though they've got more story than Krusche, Jack, and Radolf from AT1.
As for NPCs, the shopkeepers are all very funny, especially Spica and Skycat. For a goddess, Frelia is pretty useless, but freaking adorable. Everyone else is pretty typical...except Reisha. Poor Reisha.
Relationships between characters run quite deep. There's the clusterwtf between Reisha, Cloche, and Luca, Croix's protection of Cocona, Amarie's relationship with Sonia and Chester...it's all good, and everyone gets some sort of development.
And voices! For what little there are, they're all pretty decent. Jakuri, Luca, and Infel are probably my favorites, with the weakest being Targana, Alfman, and sometimes Croix and Reisha (but Reisha's VA pulled off the end of Phase 4 VERY well).

Graphics: 8/10 Typical pretty Gust 2D graphics, with more anime scenes thrown into the mix this time.

Music: 9.5/10 The strongest point of the series, the background music is a bit weaker than AT1, but the Hymmnos is stronger. EXEC_over.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/. is one of the best final boss themes ever. I like Phantasmagoria more than EXEC_with.METHOD_METAFALICA/., but both are beautiful.

Localization: 2/10 It sucks. It's horrible. It's on the same level as Suikoden I or II, so it's like it pushed localization back 10 years by existing. It's not as bad as Chaos Wars or anything, but skipping translations, confusing homonyns, bad typos, and ADDING A GLITCH TO A BOSS is just...horrible. This is why I'm not preordering any NISA games now.

Overall rating: 7/10 (The JP version is easily a 9/10, btw)
Recommendation: If you've played the first Ar tonelico, play this, even if you didn't really like it. It's improved enough over AT1 that it's worth a shot. If you've played any other Gust game, play this. If you're offended by innuendo, skip.

Review: Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?

(May contain spoilers, dood)

Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?
Platform: PSP
Genre: Action/Platformer
Playtime: 10:31
Mode: Standard

Gameplay: 7/10 I'm not much of a platforman gamer, so this was a bit of a refreshing game to play. It's standard go from left to right while dodging/defeating enemies, and not falling to your death in the multiple bottomless pits. The gimmick this game has is the time system. You can do levels in any order, but the later you wait in the day to do them, the harder they get. For example, one level had a jumping section with floating carpets. When I went back an hour later, there were no carpets, and you had to hip-pound your way up statues.
Prinny has one attack -- his swords. He can do some rapid slashing on the ground, or a rapid air slash when you jump. You get another attack if you lose all 1000 lives on a playthrough, but I didn't do that. Get used to button mashing in this game.

Control: 5/10 The worst thing about this game is the jump mechanics. You can't change direction after you jump, if you went straight up, you're staying straight up. You have a double jump, which can give a change in direction, but you can't change after that. Expect to launch yourself into pits often. The hip-pound can be a bit tough to use and aim, and there's a bit of a pause after you land, so if you barely miss an enemy, expect to get hit. The sword moves speed depends on how fast you can mash Square, which leads to lots of wrist and arm pain. After the final boss (who can't be stunned for more damage!), my entire body was in pain from button mashing. Also, I never used the dash, but I'm a careful platformer.

Graphics: 8/10 Very pretty 2D graphics, the usual from Nippon Ichi. There's some bits of 3D in there, and it looks smooth. The characters all have great expressions as well.

Music: 7/10 Also pretty good, though you'll be sick of hearing the same songs over and over as you keep dying. The voice acting is also good, I'm used to Michelle Ruff as Etna now, and the Prinnies are adorable. There is no Japanese voice option, so if you're one of them purists, go import. However, some of the enemies (the flying dolls and archers come to mind) have Japanese voices, so I guess they weren't dubbed.

Localization: 9/10 What you say? Nine out of ten on a NISA localization? Well, it's Disgaea, and they never screw up Disgaea. I'm sure there's some missed grammar bit or something in the game, but everything I saw looked fine. I didn't check who the translator was, though. I was curious too...

Overall: 7.2/10
Recommendation: If you grew up on NES platformers, this'll be familiar to you. It's difficult even on Standard mode, I lost over 400 lives. But I had a blast playing it after getting used to the unwieldy controls and memorization of stages and boss patterns. Play this if you'd like a challenging non-RPG.

Review: Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm

(This review contains blacked-out spoilers and possibly traces of nuts)

Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm
Platform: PS2
Genre: RPG
Playtime: 32:53
So this game wraps up my runthrough of the three Atelier Iris games, which I got through in about six months. This one took me about three weeks to beat, which surprised me.

Gameplay: 6/10 Nothing special about controlling Edge than in other RPGs, except that he can jump and slash things on the field. I'd talk about a world map, but there is none--there's one main hub, and five dungeons that are accessed through this one town. The dungeons range from the typical forest to the typical haunted castle. The worst part about them is that you'll have to go through the beginning parts every time you want to access deeper areas, and you'll be doing this a lot because of the quest system. It would've been nice to have teleporters that lead you in deeper (like Persona 3), or a random spawn point in the dungeon each time you entered to cut down on all the travel time.
The quest system. To move the story along, you have to do quests to get guild points. When you get a certain number of points (it changes every chapter), you're sent on that chapter's mission. There are three types of quests: Guild/Help quests that give points, Fetch quests (delivering items to people) that give you money/items, and Combat quests (fighting monsters) that also give you money/items. Money isn't too useful in this game, items are ten times more useful. So you really can't just do guild quests to move the game along, you'll run out of things to do alchemy with.
Ah yes, alchemy. You learn new recipes from recipes gotten from quests, but also from idea markers in the field. The more stuff you make, the higher your alchemy level is, and the more ideas you get/can find. Your best weapons, armor, and items are gotten through alchemy, and Iris' stats raise along with the alchemy levels. Item crafting is fun, but I miss being able to use elements like in the other two AI games. And you're going to spend a lot of time in front of that cauldron making items and fiddling with recipes to get better skills, so get used to it.
Battles are like AI2: Turn based, with a skill gauge that you build up with normal attacks, then you use skills that deplete this meter. There's also a "burst" meter at the bottom--the more hits you give enemies, the more this builds up, with points given/taken away for hitting enemy weaknesses/strengths. When this maxes out, you go into "burst mode" which gives extra exp and money, and you do a ton more damage. The ACCB bar at the top shows who will go next. You and the enemies can add on timed attacks to the cards. Even with all this, it's nothing special, just another turned based battle system. Bursts are fun to get, though, because you can do obscene damage...
Enemies are on screen instead of random encounters (think Chrono Trigger, Lunar, Persona 3). Blue ones you can slash and be done with, white ones are around your level, red ones are a bit stronger, big red ones are a lot stronger, and giant red ones are bosses. You can slash enemies for an advantage, or just run into them to start the fight, but I'm sure you want an advantage. I always have trouble with levelling in games like this, because I end up jumping over all the enemies, but I know people prefer this to the sudden random encounters out of nowhere.

Story: 5/10 Edge and Iris are Raiders, people who go into Alterworlds to do quests for the guild and people of the town. Iris has this book which turns out to be the Escalario, a book that can supposedly grant any wish. Of course, stuff happens, and you gotta go save the world now. The major problem I had with the story was how spaced out actual story events were. You have to get guild points to get to the story missions, so if you've been doing lots of minor quests, you might forget what's going on, and be confused with the story events that don't take up much time at all. I'm sure if they took out all of the padding the quests give, this game would be around 10 hours long. It's not fleshed out too well either. What exactly happened to Crowley to make him go evil? Did Yula and Alvero really want that power just to kick your ass (especially Yula!). Why was Ash SO against you? Heck, I think who Ash is was mentioned once (strongest Raider or something). Also, how did the extra Shadow Gem quest make Iris able to come back to life? A lot of parts just needed more explanation, that's all...

Characters: 6.5/10 Edge is a seemingly cold-hearted stick-in-the-mud, and that's all you learn about him. Iris is the alchemist in this game, a bit of an action girl. She's what the MacGuffin in the story revolves around, so she gets a bit of backstory in terms of what the alchemists did in the past. Nell is annoying and wants to rebuild her family fortune...and that's all her backstory. Once she joins your party, it's never really brought up again. Some NPCs like Meyna and Rufina get more backstory than the main characters do! So again, my favorite characters ended up being NPCs instead of the main set (Anna and Phenyl, if you're wondering.) Yes, there's only three playable characters, I would've liked one or two more, but if they didn't get backstory, maybe it was for the better.
Voices were nothing special. We get to hear Michelle Ruff as the lead girl yet again (she was Viese in AI2). Vic Mignogna does a good Edge, rough but not too low. Nell...sorry Stephanie Sheh, I liked you as Metis and Silmeria, but here you're WAY too high and squeaky, and it got annoying. Nell, Phenyl, and some of the high-pitched enemies are the weak voices of this game.

Graphics: 8/10 As with the rest of the series, and Ar tonelico, the 2D graphics are beautiful and detailed. Some of the backgrounds, like the entrance to Grimoire Castle, are almost breathtaking when you first see them. My worst problem with the graphics was when I had to do some platform jumping (platforming? In my RPG?!). It's a bit hard to tell exactly where in the psuedo-3D space where some platforms are...or if you can even jump on them *fistshake at Valtessa forest*

Music: 8.5/10 Beautiful, but I love all of Gust's music. Ken Nakagawa was the sole composer for this OST, I believe. The battle themes are my favorite, with Rain of Blossoms at the top. I also love Grand Phantasm, shame it only plays on the file loading screen! After a while you'll probably get sick of hearing the same dungeon and town themes over and over, though.

Overall rating: 6.8/10
Recommendation: If you're a Gust fan or have played the other Atelier Iris games, pick this up. If you haven't played any of the AI series, go play Atelier Iris 2 and skip this one and AI1. Especially AI1.