Youyou Kengeki Musou is a doujin game from the doujin circle Annkake-Spa. They’ve recently released a demo of their game that demonstrates the central mechanics of the game. What follows is a first impression of the two-stage demo that they released a few days ago. The scope of the game and how well polished it feels is something that is to be commended for a doujin work from both the gameplay, music, and quality of the visuals.
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Despite having only spent a few hours with Atelier Totori, I’ve already fallen in love with it. I’m not quite ready to declare it the game of the year yet, because it’s got some stiff competition from games like Portal 2, but it is a very strong contender.
The change of pace from having played so many games where the entire world was at stake was refreshing. The only other game I played in the series was Atelier Iris, which was much more strongly heavily focused on combat. In Totori, the combat takes a backseat to a character-driven, more immersive experience. It’s no surprise that this game appeals to the iyashikei fan in me with it being more of a slice-of-life story.
Totori and Ceci are also the most adorable characters I’ve met in a game this year. Ceci is the older, sometimes overprotective sister, while Totori is the younger one who dreams of being an adventurer. There’s scene that really touched me was after coming back from a long time adventuring, Ceci remarked how Totori has been away for so long and that she misses her. I’m looking forward to seeing Totori grow from being a fledgling, clumsy alchemist into a top-notch adventurer.
Ceci is also voiced by Asami Imai, so I hear Idolm@ster’s Chihaya whenever she speaks.
This is a crossover that needs to happen. Source unknown.
Super Mario RPG was a game that defined my childhood. It was my first RPG, and I remember playing through it when I was in elementary school. Many, many years later, during the Super Mario RPG fanfest this past summer, I got a chance to revisit the game.
To this day, Super Mario RPG stands the test of time as a solid, traditional-style RPG. Everything from its humor, to its action-based battle system, to its lively cast of characters, to its diverse, upbeat, selection of music continues to make this a classic game that I’ll be revisiting years from now. Mario RPG followed in the footsteps of EarthBound by not taking itself too seriously, an atmosphere which was aided by its cartoony graphics that still hold up to this day. It’s not a particularly difficult game. When I was a kid, I dumped all my points into health points instead of raising my attack or magic powers and struggled with it, but I noticed that knowing what I was doing, the game was much less challenging these many years later. But it’s still enjoyable, especially the battle system. The timed-hits system remains one of the finest game mechanics introduced into RPGs that many games have since emulated. It provides the player an additional level of interaction that helped make the battles more exciting. Playing through it again and discussing with our friends was one of the highlights of my summer.
Oh yeah. The Mario RPG fanfest also spawned @DatValentina.
This is another post-Fangamer Game Club analysis post. Final Fantasy Tactics is a strategy RPG applauded for its broad and deep range of customization and Pokemon-like gameplay as you build your party to take on the game’s challenges. It’s also criticized for the convoluted story and the sporadic difficulty curve. I’d like to focus this post on the game’s balance, and how FFT struggles to find a way to achieve a balance that is satisfying to the player. This is more of a gameplay analysis so spoilers here are light.
We’ll break up the major problems with the game’s balance into a couple sections.
Continue reading ‘Final Fantasy Tactics and the search for balance in SRPGs.’
For Fangamer’s recent game club event , I had the chance to play through Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 again. Paper Mario was a game that I enjoyed a lot during my childhood. This time around, I couldn’t help but notice how some of the game mechanics did not sit well with me. The following analysis is a refined version of my post on the game club event forum topic.
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