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The Review: A Bastion of Gaming

OK, Skyrim will have to try extremely hard to take the “personal game of the year” title from this game. There, no surprises left in this review. I loved every little thing about this game and it’s really hard for me to find a real flaw. Let’s try, though.

The graphics in Bastion look beautiful. Everything is hand drawn, colorful, sharp and shiny. The levels are detailed, the characters even more so, and the enemies look unique and interesting. Everything is also very well animated, with plenty of frames for each movement. Nothing looks choppy or half-made. There’s also plenty of variation in the art for each level, so it doesn’t get boring, even for a second.

Bastion Wallpaper

Courtesy of Supergiant Games – a Wallpaper.

The music is where the game really shines, though. The soundtrack has that Firefly/Western/Country atmosphere, with a bit of an eastern touch in some of the songs. Honestly, this is the first game where I’m actually considering getting the soundtrack. The sound effects are not that notable, but with the amazing soundtrack, they don’t need to be.

The story is the unique thing that Bastion brings to the table. Every minute of gameplay is narrated by an old man with a great voice. I’m not talking just about cut scenes here. Every notable thing you do is described by the narrator. This improves on the atmosphere even more than the music. It makes you connect to the protagonist and really think hard about his your actions, while also keeping you interested in how it will all fold out. There’s also an ending changing choice you make right before the end of the game which adds to the replay value a bit, unless you are like me and go to YouTube to see the alternative ending.

The gameplay is not perfect, but I find it pretty close. The only real critique I could find is that maybe the controls could be a bit better. You see, the camera perspective is isometric and most of the movement is diagonal. This would be fine if the game assigned diagonal directions to the keyboard, but up remains up, causing you to awkwardly hold up and left to move north, for instance. It’s not that bad, and it personally didn’t cause me any trouble, but I see people complaining and this is a valid reason. Still, If I’m not mistaken, a patch was released which addresses this, but I haven’t tried it because I completed the game well before that.

The game is basically an RPG, but a pretty simple one. More levels simply equate to more health and more spirit slots. Spirits are various alcoholic beverages which give you special bonuses if you equip them. Other than that, you have two weapon slots and a special attack slot. There are several weapons in the game and each plays differently. Each can also be upgraded five times, choosing between two different upgrades every time. Once you buy an upgrade level, though, you get to choose between the two options as many times as you want. The special attacks are very varied, but they don’t get upgraded or anything of the sort.

The Verdict

Well, that’s it. Once again, this is a great game that I recommend anyone to buy. If your computer isn’t top notch, you have one more reason to do it, since it’s not that demanding, being 2D. Highly, highly recommended!

Meaningless Score: 9.5/10

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The Review : Is Brave Story a Proper JRPG?

As you can tell, I really love classic style console role-playing games, and Brave Story is a perfect old school example of one. Brave Story is a new game, but everything about it feels old school. You have this unremarkable kid who ends up becoming the savior of a world, loyal friends and companions he meets along the way and evil enemies he must defeat, rivals he takes back on the right path and plenty of adventure along the way.

The mechanics of Brave Story are not too complicated. You have your primary attributes which grow with experience and get increased by equipment. As you level up, you learn new skills, and as your party members grow fonder of you, you learn new unity skills, which are combo attacks involving multiple characters. Your companions can change their weapon and armor, while the main character’s sword upgrades during the story. Each character can also equip three accessories which are either found, bought or crafted, provided you find the right recipe.

Brave Story - Screen 1

The graphics are in the 3D anime style, with the level of quality close to the PS2.

There are plenty of characters in Brave Story, but you are slightly encouraged to choose a fixed group to play the game with. Still, switching isn’t impossible and if you like, you could max out every one of them.

Brave Story also includes plenty of side quests, which provide rewards in the form of new crafting recipes, equipment or various other items which help you on your main quest. You can also catch birds in special mini games, which you can then use in bird fights and acquire even more rewards this way. There’s plenty to do aside from the main quest and you don’t have to wait until you reach the end game to do a lot of those things. It is, however, much easier to complete the side quests once you can freely fly around the map.

Once you come to that point, you also get to visit an extra hard bonus dungeon, where you can fight a special boss, for even more rewards. The graphics are simple, but nice and the characters are very detailed. The sound is just as good. Brave Story looks and feels like one of the classic PlayStation era JRPGs so any fan will truly love it. In any case, if you love a good JRPG, you won’t go wrong with Brave Story. It’s one of the best games of this genre the PSP has to offer. While we’re at it, I should also recommend watching the Anime. It has different characters, which appear in the game as cameos you can actually play with for a while.

The Verdict

Score: 9/10

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The Review: Is Final Fantasy II – Anniversary Edition Worthy of Its Legacy?

This was the other remake I completed on my PSP and I have to say, it’s just as good, even better than the first. I must admit, I haven’t played this one in its original edition so I have nothing to compare it against except various reviews of the original by other people. Again we have the beautiful high resolution (for the PSP screen) 2D graphics, the recognizable Final Fantasy music and the good old Square style which seems lost on the newer games. Again, not much has changed from the original, other than the addition of the optional dungeons. Again, we have the pure retro RPG experience.

Final Fantasy II - Anniversary Edition - Screen 2

Everything looks beautiful. The graphics alone would have been upgrade enough.

So why is it better then? Because the original Final Fantasy II was better than the original Final Fantasy I. It had a more complex story, a more complex level up system and many of the “rookie” mistakes of the first game were fixed. This time, there are no levels and no experience.

Whatever it is that you use in battle is what increases after it. Use sword attacks? Your sword skill and offensive physical attributes increase. Get hit by spells? Your spell resistance goes up. Use a spell? Its level will increase. This is a system that is extremely simple to use and understand, but that at the same times creates a huge complexity in your choices. There is also no limit to it. If you use your characters in a certain way, you will get your tanks, mages, healers, and other typical roles, but there is nothing stopping you from doing some grinding and building up characters.

Final Fantasy II - Anniversary Edition - Screen 1

The high resolution 2D graphics look amazing. They boosted the spell effects to.

As I understand from other people, this system was also a bit of an issue in the original game. You could abuse the system by attacking your own party members, which would always give a more sizable increase compared to regular enemies. You were even encouraged to do so to go past the pretty high difficulty level the original game was known for. I don’t know if they really changed this, but throughout my playthrough of the remake, I never once felt the need to do this. At a few points, the difficulty of the game would increase quite a bit, but with a bit of smart spell use, my characters would quickly catch up.

The Verdict

To conclude, Final Fantasy II – Anniversary Edition is true to its roots and a great Final Fantasy game. It gets an absolute recommendation from me.

Score: 9/10

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The Review: Is Final Fantasy I – Anniversary Edition Worth It?

Since my PSP finally got hacked, I can “afford” to play games on it. Final Fantasy I – Anniversary Edition is one of the games I managed to complete in the last few months. All in all, it’s a remake true to its roots. Not much in the mechanics has changed, but the whole game received an excellent graphical face-lift, without losing its retro charm.

While the DS remakes of Final Fantasy are fun, the 3D graphics aren’t really that nice and, in my opinion, take away from the experience. On the PSP, however, Square decided to stick to 2D sprites, but made them in beautiful, high resolution which looks excellent on the PSP screen. The characters, backgrounds, enemies, effects, everything has been upgraded.

The mechanics of Final Fantasy I, however, remained the same. You get to choose between several classes, which differentiate in their stat growth on level up, equipment they can wear, and the maximum spell level they can eventually use. Each class can also, in mid to endgame, be upgraded, allowing for even higher level spells and more equipment. Final Fantasy I was one of the first proper console role playing games so the mechanics are pretty simple for today’s standards. This is why those who played these games in the past will love them, while those that started gaming recently might find them a bit dull or tedious. The frequent random battles do not help with this.

Other than the graphical upgrade, Final Fantasy I – Anniversary Edition also received a set of bonus dungeons, each with an elemental orientation and each unlocked after killing the associated elemental boss in the main story. The dungeons hold strong opponents and extra treasure, but not much else.

All in all, this is a game that true fans of the franchise should definitely play through. As for everyone else, try it. Some might give up after a while, but for those that stick with it to the end, it will be worth it.

The Verdict

Score: 8/10

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The Story of Emberwind

The kingdom of Grendale is being invaded by gremlins and it is up to you to save the day. You are Kindle, the only fire gnome amongst the gnomes of Grendale and the local watchman. With the help of your inventions and your snow owl friend, Wick, you can achieve this.

The Review: What is Emberwind?

Emberwind is an action platformer that has Super Nintendo written all over it. You go around and whack gremlins with your staff, unlock new moves and abilities, collect gems and other treasures and save the people of Grendale by lighting lamps and fireplaces to scare away and destroy the gremlins. As you progress, you increase your health by acquiring treasure and your strength by finding and freeing hidden fairies on each level. Every now and then, if you look hard enough, you can also unlock a new move which will allow you to jump further or higher, avoid taking damage, discover new ways to deal damage, or move faster.

Emberwind is incredibly polished. The graphics are old school and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the game is from the Super Nintendo. The sprites are drawn nicely, the characters have great animations and there really is nothing about the look of the game you could complain about.

The music of Emberwind is orchestral and atmospheric, and it makes you feel heroic from the beginning to the end. The sounds fit the characters well, and none of it is bothersome like in some other games. Again, the game sounds like it should belong on a 16-bit console and this is a major plus for me.

The basic premise of Emberwind is simple. You get an objective for each level which you need to complete while scoring as many points and finding as many secrets as possible, and then you return to your owl and leave the level. At the end of each area, there is a boss, and you also get a flying level here and there. It’s really worth it to find as many secrets you can, since points give you extra health bubbles, while other collectibles increase your strength and other abilities. The game also tracks your time for each level, and you can revisit previous levels to beat your old records, which will also grant you extra points.

The Verdict

All in all, Emberwind is a great and polished game, definitely worth playing.

Score: 9/10

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The Review: What is Hammerfight?

Wow, this one actually surprised me! When I read that Hammerfight a physics game where you use mouse gestures to control your character, I expected an interesting gimmick that will grow old fast and just get in the way of the game. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

In Hammerfight, you control a flying vehicle with a huge weapon attached to it, usually a boulder on a chain or something similar. You use your mouse to move and to swing your weapon around and hit stuff. Now, this might sound a bit tedious, but it really works great. The physics are on point and it really does feel like you are actually hitting stuff. I have played the game for a few levels and, while it is hard, it never felt like it was hard because of the controls.

I didn’t get far enough, but it also seems that, later on, you get to customize your flying machine and weapons with various gems. Even without this, the game feels fun, but I have to say, I’m looking forward to that part.

The visuals and the story of Hammerfight are another great plus. The story seems detailed and interesting, the graphics look decent, with lots of attention to detail, and the music creates a great atmosphere. There are places in the game where you can chose which way to go, which also adds some replayability. In any case, a fun game. I recommend!

The Verdict

Score: 8.5/10

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The Review

Ancient Trader plays more like a board game than anything else. You select a scenario, each with different winning conditions, start with a small ship and begin trading. You go from port to port, buy low and then sell high, all while collecting treasure, fighting mythical sea creatures and avoiding or defeating other captain’s. You can get quests from ports for extra cash, buy some powerful artifacts and upgrades your ship’s weapons, cargo hold and speed.

Ancient Trader also quite pretty, and everything looks like a hand drawn ancient map. The effects are fine and the music fits well with the package.

Sounds fun, right? Well, not so much. You see, Ancient Trader is extremely simplified. You only have three types of merchandise, only three types of weapons which follow a rock – paper – scissor system, and that’s about it. Once you complete a single map, you’ve pretty much seen everything there is to see. Now, the game does support hotseat multiplayer, so that might be fun, but that’s about it. It’s pirates diluted to the point of not being fun anymore, at least not for me.

I know people hate that word, but I think an accurate description would be to say that the game is extremely “casualized”.

The Verdict

Score: 5/10, maybe 7/10 if hotseat turns out to be fun.

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Devil’s Tuning Fork

I downloaded this free game because I found the concept interesting. Basically, you are blind and you use a tuning fork to navigate around the world from a first person perspective. You use the left mouse button to fire a high frequency sound which then bounces of walls and outlines the area around you, or you can use a slower frequency sound with the right mouse button in order to detect weak floors and stuff like that. You can also use a charged up sound which is then fired to an area you target and then it spreads from there. This is used to outline distant areas or trigger bells and stuff like that.

Anyway, it’s an interesting concept, which looks great, but I’m not really sure how good the game is. It feels more like a novelty than anything else. There is a story somewhere in there to, and it seems to be scary or something, but I didn’t really feel it, as it’s to abstract.

Rogue Survivor

A zombie survival roguelike, of all things. Again, I’ve found this to be an interesting concept, but it’s still really early in development so it feels a bit cumbersome to play. Still, this looks like it could become the next minecraft/dwarf fortress if done well. I haven’t played it to much, but I will definitely follow it along.

Well, as you see, I decided to do something about my lack of playing games lately. I will try to find a cool game every now and then to “review” and even provide a link if the game is free. There are really some gems out there that should be discovered by more people so hopefully, a couple more will discover them thanks to a post here.

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Since I completed the game, I thought I should do a short review, so here goes…

The Review

The game is fun, it really is. I wasn’t bored at any point while playing it. It’s not perfect, but it definitely is fun. It sort of reminds me of a mix between the old Soulblazer and a Zelda game for some reason. It’s colorful, looks nice all around and has a cheerful atmosphere. It’s light on the story, but it also doesn’t make the story that important so you wont mind.

Now, about the imperfections. First of all, as I said, It’s light on the story. At some points, the story just isn’t making that much sense and the whole “saving the humanity” part just drops in on you unexpectedly and ends right there so it kind of feels weird. Secondly, I feel they could handle the whole monster raising thing better. Basically, you have 4 fupong types and you feed and combine them to make them grow. The problem is, it takes a while, and a much bigger problem is, if you’re not careful, you can lose your fupongs just like that, which makes the whole process of raising them a bit tedious. In my case, what happened was that I was using level 1 fupongs throughout the entire game and was just raising one of each kind at the ranch to see how they look like, but never used them. It basically makes them not really a part of the game.

Still, as I said, the game is fun and is worth playing. You get an enhanced mode after completing it which let’s you keep your old weapons and stuff on a new playthrough, but I wont be going through that. I feel that the 17 hours it took to complete it once is more than enough playtime i got out of it.

The Verdict

All in all, I would give it an 8/10 – Something I will complete, but wont be going back to it.

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I tried out this one yesterday, but I don’t think I will be playing it anymore. The best way to describe it would be Pokemon without the exploration. Or the leveling. Or familiar monsters (to me at least). There’s one town, navigated by menus. You get a random monster by drawing a glyph on the screen or shouting something in the microphone, then you go and train it at your ranch. You need to feed it and let it rest when it gets too tired. Every now and then there’s a tournament where you can win money and other stuff and increase your rank. Once you hit a wall, you try and get a new, better monster by summoning or breeding. All you get in the game are menus. You train through menus, watching a training animation every time, you travel through menus, and basically, you fight through menus. The fights aren’t that good either. You get a screen on which you click to move closer or move away from the enemy and, based on the distance, chose one of 3 attacks. After one minute, the one with more health wins.

Monster Rancher DS Box Art

The box art looks nice, but the game didn’t suck me in.

Basically, for me, it’s a duller and more tedious version of Pokemon and I do not like it one bit. Time to try another one.