racketboy.com

Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but nothing stood out about it, and I'll probably remember absolutely nothing about it by January.

51. Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X PSN Vita
52. Um Jammer Lammy PSN PS3
53. Space Channel 5: Part 2 PSN PS3
54. 3D Fantasy Zone: Opa-Opa Bros. 3DS eShop
55. Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryuu To Hikari No Tsurugi Famicom
56. Castlevania NES
57. Halo 3 XBox 360
58. Grabbed By The Ghoulies XBox
59. Genpei Touma Den: Kan No Ni PC Engine
60. Mugen Senshi Valis: The Legend of a Fantasm Soldier PC Engine CD
61. Shenmue Dreamcast
62. Kuri Kuri Mix PS2
63. Pokémon Link: Battle! 3DS eShop *NEW*
64. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile PS1 Classics (Vita) *NEW*
65. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice 3DS eShop *NEW*
66. Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal PC *NEW*


One day I'll write on this thread and it won't be a monster post that takes me over an hour to write.

Today is not that day.


Pokémon Link: Battle!


Pokémon Link: Battle! is a download-only block matching puzzle game for 3DS. It is known in the US as Pokémon Battle Trozei! and is a sequel to a DS title called Pokémon Link! on my side of the pond and Pokemon Trozei! on the opposite side.

Pokémon Link was a surprisingly good puzzle title for the original DS. In it you swiped the stylus to shift rows of pokemon icons around, yoshi's cookie style, as more and more icons rained from the top. Your goal, in the classic style, was to match as many as possible to clear the field and stop yourself getting overwhelmed. Swiping left or right moved the rows across, and they looped, Pac-man style. Sliding down pushed the bottom most pokemon off the screen, and it would fall from the top again. Sliding up let you life a column of pokemon to make a match, but only one square - and if you let go, gravity would take affect and they would drop hback down again. It was fast paced an frenetic and the mechanics made you think on your feet. It also had a chain system where the number of pokemon needed to make a match would shrink as the chain progressed - from 4, to 3, to 2. Managing chains was the main point of the game, as they would freeze the icons falling from the top, which normally came in thick and fast.

Why have I spent so long describing the first game in the series instead of this one? There's a few reasons. 1. The first game is much better. 2. The second game is a massive departure from the first, to the point where I don't even feel it should have the same name like it does, and to explain why I dislike it in comparison, you need to understand how it differs from the first.



So, first of all, the goal of the stages is different here. You have to defeat a series of pokemon, who appear on the top screen of the 3DS. These pokémon 'attack' you, sometimes by messing with the icons on the field, but normally by literally bashing the field. This lowers your health bar, which is the second big new change - that health bar is your new lose condition - you'll never lose by having too many icons on screen, but rather by running out of health. Enemies attacking your playfield also bash holes in the border of it - and after they make a big enough dent in it, they can enter the field, blocking a ton of space, and disturbing your combos by moving around in the field.

Moving icons is different here -0 rather than the frenetic and intense sliding around of the lines of icons as before, you can literally just drag an icon to wherever you want on the playfield - if another icon is there already, they'll swap places. This makes setting up combos the name of the game: if you make a match of 4 or 5 in a row, then make a match of at least 3 right after, the opponent pokemon will stop attacking, and you can start matching pokemon whilst the timer is still. Like the original, you only need matches of 2 at this point to make combos, but new pokemon won't appear. If you clear the screen, the combo continues, but you need to make another 4 and 3 match to refreeze the enemy actions.



Unfortunately, these new mechanics are just not fun. Like, at all. The enemy on the field feels annoying, the health bar goes down quickly when you arent comboing, so you literally do that ALL the time, and the gameplay never changes throught the games 60 or so stages. I was already not having fun by world 2 (7 stages in) and was glad to see the end once I made it there.

The base mechanics of this game were later used to build the freemium game Pokémon Shuffle, also for 3DS. That game is a ton better than this. This game is not worth the cost it goes for at all.

Pick up the DS original, it's probably half the price of this download, and try Pokémon Shuffle, which is free. Both of those are more enjoyable and much better value than this game. A real letdown.




Klonoa: Door to Phantomile



Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is a 2.5D (I hate that term) sidescrolling platform game for the PS1 (and later the Wii). I played the PS1 game on my Vita.

And wow, does this game impress. Playstation paltformers have always felt a bit lacking to me. Games like Crash and Spyro are solid games, but compared to the stuff that came out on Nintendo 64 they always feel somewhat limited and underwhelming. Klonoa, by sticking to a 2D gameplay style, manages to mainly avoid that issue - it's truly something special.

Klonoa's plot is pretty simple, although it is built up more than you might expect. An evil nightmare guy is trying to take over the world, and you go and recruit help from various people from different elemental clans that inhabit the world to help you defeat him. There are a few surprising twists in the story though, and the ending was rather unexpected.



Visually the game is pretty nice for PS1. The environments are fully 3D and quite pretty, although sometimes not all that detailed. However, due to the 2.5 nature of the game, and a tendency in later levels to have multiple split paths that loop round each other, you can often see a lot of other routes in the foreground and background as you play.

As mentioned before, the game plays in a 2.5D style. Unlike most recent games that have this moniker applied though, Klonoa really utilises this aspect of the game design. Paths loops in and out of the screen, there are frequent opportunitys to move into the background or foreground, you can interact with object which are in the foreground or background in various ways and it all actually feels '3D' despite the 2D gameplay mechanics. The main gimmick of Klonoa is his ability to grab enemies. Once you grab an enemy, they inflate and you carry them above your head. From here you can throw them forward, or into the foreground or background, or you can throw them below you in midair by pressing jump again mid jump. This allows you to hit things below you, and more importantly, to double jump. The game makes clever use of these mechanics - not just in it's platforming, but in regular puzzles you must solve to continue.



Boss fights are also a lot of fun, and make great use of the 2.5D mechanics again - often enemies must be attacked as they are in the foreground or background, and many of the fights take place on circule stages where you and your enemy chase each other round whilst throwing attacks from the opposite side. One especially cool boss fight took place on a swinging bridge where the boss would set obstacles in your path as the bridge swung back, meaning you had to dodge them as it swung back forward and attack when you were near. It was really impressive.

The music in Klonoa is really excellent. There are lots of whimsical themes with a ton of charm, but they also all had a really epic feel to them - they fit the story of the game really well. The quality of the audio was great, and I'd definitely recommend checking out the sound track if you can.



Klonoa isn't perfect. The platforming can feel a little slidy somehow, and I slipped of small moving platforms a lot in later levels when I felt I shouldn't. Some of the later bosses are a pain, and the game is really rather short overall. There are also some collectables than are missable, requiring you replay the level to grab them, which is a real pet peeve of mine.

That said though,Klonoa is a really fantastic title, and a must-own for PS1. Or at least, it would be if it wasn't so damn expensive (it is in the UK at least, not sure about US). It's also on Wii, which was a cheap way to get the game not too long back - but not any more, now it's starting to get kinda pricy too! Luckily, it's on PS3 and Vita via PS1 Classics, so if that's the only option you can justify splashing out on, absolutely spend a few quid and play one of the best platformers the PS1 has to offer.




Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice


Spirit of Justice is the latest in the Ace Attorney series of games, and the 6th mainline game in the series.

This review is nlikely to be a little shorter than the rest, mostly because if you've played these games before you know what to expect - the usual invesitgate the crime scene, cross examine barmy witnesses, present evidence to solve the case in court stuff that has made the series so compelling.



There are a few new mechanics at play here - mainly the new soul channeling aspect in court cases where the victims soul is channeled to show what they saw, felt and heard in their final moments (yes, this series is weird). This mechanic is fun enough in it's own way, although it sometimes asks for a few stretches of logic or some tricky stuff to notice to progress.

The setting of this game is 50% the usual, and 50% set in Khurain, a foreign land where spirit channeling originates and where everyone is deeply religious. A really contrived law exists where defence attorneys recieve the same sentence as their clients if they lose, meaning lawyers are nonexistant and hated. As stupid as it is, it does help set the game up for some higher stakes than usual, with revolution, political 'intrigue' and the likes being part of the main plotline.



The game also tries hard to add some higher stakes for the main characters too, with the returning Maya Fey ebing involved in a few cases, and with Apollo Justice being given a pretty major backstory updatre that feels somewhat forced, but is interesting overall. The addition of a land full of spirit channeling and the likes adds a really interesting twist to some of the cases, with some really unexpected turns happening in case 3 and 5 in particular.

The new proescution lawyer is an unlikeable guy and even though *MINOR SPOILERS* he gets a redemption of sorts at the end *END MINOR SPOILERS* he never ever manages to become truly redemmed or likeable in my eyes, unlike the likes of Miles Edgeworth, Simon Blackquill or Godot from previous games. The people of Khurain are made to seem really unlikeable to me too - they're a bloodthirsty lot who call for the death of you whilst in court and it honestly just really colours the place in a way I don't think it was meant to. I don't know if I really care about the country's corruption when it's people are so horrid. Why do I want to help them again?



The game also has an issue that it tries to use a little bit of all the additional mechanics the series has had over the years - psychoanalysis, psyche locks, apollos bracelet, logic paths, forensic investigation - all sorts. However, because it packs all these things in, they never get use quite enough that they can really flesh them out and use them to the fullest - they all feel like tutorials for the mechanics.

Anyhow, this isn't the best game in the series by some margin, but it's still another good entry in a consistently great franchise. Worth the purchase.




Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal



Tales of Monkey Island is the latest game in the Monkey Island series, even though it's getting on a bit now itself. It is also one of the classic Telltale style adventure games, alongside the likes of Sam & Max and Strongbad, that I prefer to their more recent Walking Dead style.

Chapter 1 opens up with Guybrush in battle with LeChuck, who has kidnapped Elaine, again. It's interesting coming into it at this stage as it hints at a list of epic adventures and silly puzzles Guybrush has had to solve to get to this point. Things quickly go wrong though, and the special voodoo sword Guybrush uses ends up removing all the evil from LeChuck, turning him human, cursing Guybrush and releasing a deadly pox of evil across the ocean. Guybrush also ends up stranded on a small island called Flotsam Island, which is surrounded by inpenetrable winds, stopping anyone leaving the island. Thus begins a quest to solve puzzles and find a list of 3 artifacts repeatedly, in the classic Monkey Island style.



The game was released for PC as well as WiiWare, and the limitations of the latter seem to have had an affect on the former. WiiWare was known for it's absurdly limited 52MB file size limit, and although the PC version has been polished a little more, you can see those limits having an affect here. Graphically the game looks very basic, with limited textures and very low polygon models. The game is voice acted, but often your multiple dialogue options are replied to with the same audio, presumably for space saving reasons. This is a shame as the witty dialogue that was present in The Curse of Monkey Island kept you press dialogue options over and over to see what they would say next.

The puzzles in the game are rather simple, but not overly so. A few of them took some thinking outside of the box,. but the limited scope of the enviornment meant you found the necessary items to problem solve pretty quickly, compared to the early games where you could easily miss something in the rather large world that you needed for a puzzle.



Despite it's simple puzzles and poor graphic quality, the game quickly grew on me and I got back into that comfortable Monkey Island/TellTale Sam and Max zone and had a great time. Monkey Island is a series that i enjoy, but I tend to prefer Curse of Monkey Island to the first two. This definitely reminds me of Curse more than Secret.

I look forward to playing the other chapters soon. At about 3 hours long they're just bite sized enough to make you want to playt through in one or two sessions, so just what I need to tide me over between my upcoming sessions of Pokémon Sun.

P.S. I've heard mixed stuff about Escape From Monkey Island, which I've yet to play. Has anyone here tried it? Worth a punt?

alienjesus wrote:P.S. I've heard mixed stuff about Escape From Monkey Island, which I've yet to play. Has anyone here tried it? Worth a punt?

It is worth playing to finish out the series, but it is a disappointment.

Klonoa looks so rad, I've been meaning to check out that series for the longest time. Don't thing I've ever actually seen one of those games in person though. They must be scarce.

First 50:

51. Akumajō Dracula (Famicom Disk System)
52. Castlevania (NES)
53. Classic NES Series: Castlevania (Game Boy Advance)
54. Guardian Heroes (Xbox Live Arcade)
55. Metal Slug (Neo Geo MVS)
56. Metal Slug 2 (Neo Geo MVS)
57. Metal Slug 3 (Neo Geo MVS)
58. Soul of Darkness (DSiWare)
59. Code of Princess (3DS)
60. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
61. Super Mario Land (Game Boy)
62. The Legend of Zelda 2: Link no Bōken (Famicom Disk System)
63. Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC)
64. Shan Gui (Steam)
65. Space Fury (ColecoVision)
66. Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle (ColecoVision)
67. Gateway to Apshai (ColecoVision)
68. MURI (Steam)
69. Pink Hour (Steam)
70. Pink Heaven (Steam)
71. Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet (Steam)
72. Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt (Steam)
73. Haunted House (Atari 2600)
74. Gremlins (Atari 2600)
75. Alien (Atari 2600)
76. Xenophobe (Xbox - Midway Arcade Treasures 2)
77. Frankenstein's Monster (Atari 2600)
78. Ghost Manor / Spike's Peak (Atari 2600)
79. Higurashi When They Cry Hou - Ch.1 Onikakushi (Steam)
80. Dracula II: Noroi no Fūin (Famicom Disk System)
81. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES)
82. Beneath the Cherry Trees (Steam)
83. Voices from the Sea (Steam)
84. Mushihimesama (Steam)
85. Sonic CD (Steam)
86. Shovel Knight (Wii U)
87. Super Mario World (SNES)
88. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (Game Boy)
89. Operation C (Game Boy)
90. Metroid (Famicom Disk System)
91. Metroid (NES)
92. Breath of Fire (SNES)


Sometime during my youth I came to the realization that Squaresoft was my favorite developer (how times have changed) and I made it a point to seek out all their games. One of the more "obscure" ones I grabbed towards the end of the 1990s was Breath of Fire. It was quite a different experience compared to Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, and the like. Turns out Square only served as publisher here, as this is the first entry in Capcom's six-part JRPG epic.

So at first glance BoF looks a bit stock and generic. There's your typical green overworld littered with dungeons and towns, and the battle commands are your expected attack, magic, item, defend. The plots a blasé too - the player is on the side of the Light Dragons battling the, you guessed it, Dark Dragons. But a bit of digging beneath the surface reveals some quirks that make the game a worthwhile experience.

Don't expect to play as any human characters. Everyone is some sort of anthropomorphic creature or a humanoid that can transform into a beast. Such designs are a recurring series staple, as are the two leads - Ryu (man who morphs into a dragon) and Nina (beautiful girl with bird wings who eventually can morph into an actual bird). And while the combat can turn into an A-button mashing slog, it's in the dungeons and overworld where the distinctions between characters become apparent. Ryu, for instance, can fish items out of wells and streams. Bo, the wolfman, can hunt wild animals (he sucks at this) and traverse through thick vegetation. Other party members can pick locks, break down walls, and devise new travel methods.

The game looks decent enough. There's a lot of detail in the enemy designs, especially the bosses. Like several playable characters, most of these appear to be human but then transform into fearsome beasts once battle commences. A few "cutscenes" (really just giant anime stills accompanied by text) are thrown into the mix as well. These are rather pleasing; it's a shame they appear so infrequently. The game's soundtrack may be the best thing about the whole experience. It's quite aristocratic, with a heavy emphasis on keys, strings, and flute. I'm hard-pressed to think of anything else on the SNES that sounds remotely like this (with the exception of the sequel perhaps).

There's a pleasant flow to the game, with plenty of varied corners of the overworld to explore. The towns are very well-designed, each with a very distinct group of inhabitants. There's the village of Romero, for instance, which is filled with zombies. Tunlan, an island paradise, is inhabited by beatiful ladies that only communicate through music. And then there's Bleak, which is full of thieves including the innkeeper who won't hesitate to raid your pockets. Dungeons are similarly varied, with many containing a plethora of Zelda-ish puzzles. Some of the later ones are especially tricky, like the areas containing spinning floors and walls that periodically turn invisible (but remain impassable).

Challenge is kept to a relative minimum. Most enemies can be taken out with a flurry of physical attacks and the typical "big spells + occasional healing" method is enough to best most any boss. There's one caveat though: the game expects the player to backtrack occasionally to collect previously inaccessible gear (chests behind locked doors, for instance). Skip these items and you're in some serious shit.

The pacing of Breath of Fire is a bit odd. The main quest (the whole Light vs. Dark Dragon bit) is continually obfuscated by some little crisis in each and every town. Someone gets sick, or a kid is lost, or whatever. The game ends up feeling like a string of mandatory side-quests, with any sense of potential "epicness" kicked by the wayside. Also, the game's about ten hours too long. Eventually it starts to feel like the developers were just phoning things in. There's a "dream world" that lacks the nuance of meaning of the one you see in, say, EarthBound and is instead just a bunch of arbitrary crap thrown in a blender. There are some obnoxious fetch-quests that pop up right before the concluding chapter (you find an elevator, it's broken, you have find some random asshole that has parts that will make it work, the parts are also broken, some other asshole has to be tracked down to fix them) and some straight-up dick moves by the developers (like the boss who kicks you out of a dungeon forcing Ryu and co. to traverse the entire thing again).

And the translation. What a disaster. Dialogue is dry and lazy. There are some occasional "jokes" (the two leading ladies seem to be trying to out-sass each other) but they come out of nowhere and make zero sense contextually. Worse is the constant use of abbreviations. I picked up an item called a "b.stn" - okay, so this is, uh, a bee sting? Of course not, it's a (thunder)bolt stone to be used in battle of course! At one point Nina has two of her kingdom's soldiers join her in a brief foray into a cave. Solider 1 and Soldier 2. Or, as the game calls them, "Sr-1" and "Sr-2". Yikes.

Overall, this is a "slow" game with a light airy feel to it. It's not like Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger, which compel you to stay up until 3 AM just to see the next dungeon. No, Breath of Fire is a game you pop in on a lazy Sunday afternoon when there's nothing better to do. There are some really intriguing elements here, but the overall dispassionate pacing and tepid battle system sink things quite a bit. It's a "B-List" 16-bit JRPG, perhaps C-List. I'd put this on par with the first Lufia, if that reference helps. Nevertheless, anyone the least bit interested in 16-bit JRPGs who has already played "the classics" will find some enjoyment here (I apparently have, as this is probably my fifth run through). Onward to the sequel (next year...)!

BoneSnapDeez wrote:the game expects the player to backtrack occasionally to collect previously inaccessible gear (chests behind locked doors, for instance). Skip these items and you're in some serious shit.

Yeah, I missed that stuff back in '98. That loss combined with only using the pup dragon form meant the game was a lot harder for me than it was supposed to be.

BoneSnapDeez wrote:It's a "B-List" 16-bit JRPG, perhaps C-List

I'd go with B-List for BoF1. I'd put BoF3 on the C-List. And BoF2 on the D-List.

I'm generally not a big fan of platformers (being really bad at them doesn't help), but I had a lot of fun with Klonoa. Even when it got really challenging near the end I still was able to push through it.

Only big problem I had with it is that physical copies are expensive. Cheapest copy on Amazon right now is $120

@Exhuminator
I like the second game. In many ways it's superior to the first but the developers really should have trimmed some fat out of it... The town-building segment... (*shudders*).

The first time I played Breath of Fire I did collect a bunch of the optional stuff... but I was served with a "bad ending" for not finding the final dragon form. I immediately knew something was wrong ("was the final boss really supposed to be a little girl?").

Like I always love to bring up, don't overlook the overlooked Breath of Fire 4. It's incredible. I couldn't stomach much of the others. Something about giant frogs, 10 plus some hours of boring child Ryu in 3 and stolen Chrono Trigger songs. Sums up the series outside of 4 for me.

Breath of Fire is really an 8-bit Dragon Quest in a lot of ways. It's fun, but a bit formulaic. It's got its charms, but not many series outcharm Dragon Quest.

I'll second Xeogred's BoFIV recommendation. It's good, good stuff. Probably the best of the series. My favorite after that is the second game, sans the translation. Seriously, the first game looks like Shakespeare compared to BoFII. These days, I'd play the retranslation patch.

Good reviews, guys. Keep it up.

Also, Klonoa is excellent. That ending, though...just devastating.