As you already know I played a fair bit of Persona 4 Arena, which you can read about here. Even though I played it a whole bunch more my thoughts on it didn't change a whole lot. So if you want to hear about it go read what I already wrote.
The games I spent the most time with were Kingdom Hearts 3DS, and The Last Story. That's right, The Last Story finally stopped getting delayed long enough to come out! Since these are both fairly sizable games I have a lot to go off about.
I haven't done one of these in a long time, so I'm anxious to get all of these thoughts out. Let's not waste any more time. It's game time!
Kingdom Hearts 3DS
I've been a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series since its inception. I really liked it back then, but with each passing game I find myself growing more apprehensive about the series. For some reason Square thinks it's a good idea to keep releasing non numbered Kingdom Hearts sequels. I understand that the series makes them a literal ton of money, but now it's getting out of control. It wouldn't bug me so much if each new entry in the game didn't seem to factor heavily into the overall plot of the series. To make it even worse they're all on different consoles.
Originally it seemed to me that Nomura had an overall plan for the series that he was following very closely. With each passing game however, I feel that he's making everything up as he goes along. A lot of the time it's not even necessarily making the overall plot better, but more convoluted. That's where the true issue with all of these non-numbered sequels lies. How the hell is anyone going to know what's going on in Kingdom Hearts 3 if and when it ever comes out if they haven't played all these games? I've played most of them and read wiki pages on the games and I still barely understand what the hell is going on half the time.
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| A lot of the Kingdom Hearts 3DS story is kind of like a fever dream. |
I liked Kingdom Hearts 3DS, but it took the plot of the series and made it infinitely more convoluted. I'd go into more detail about it, but it would basically spoil the entire game and I never want to do that. On top of that the story itself is told in the most convoluted way ever. Instead of showing things linearly a lot of the important cut scenes are shown as optional flashbacks, which could have easily been shown chronologically. On op of that you're switching between two plot lines every twenty minutes against your will, but more on that later.
So it probably sounds like I hate everything about this game right? Well now that I got all of my grumpy complaining out of the way I'm glad to let you know that I actually did like it. What's it all about you ask? Here, I'll let you in on the basis of the plot.
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| Yen Sid thinks Sora and Riku suck, so they need to become TRUE keyblade masters. |
Turns out Sora and Riku aren't strong enough to take on Master Xehanort (See, if you didn't play Birth by Sleep on the PSP you don't even have any idea who that is). Since his impending return is short at hand they need to take every chance to power up. In order to do that Mickey and Yen Sid have decided that they must take the Mark of Mastery Exam in order to become true Keyblade masters. In order to do this they are sent into a dream world to find the keyholes of sleeping worlds in order to awaken them. This is pretty much old hat in the Kingdom Hearts universe.
As you may have guessed you will be travelling from world to world fighting monsters. This time they're rainbow colored things called Dream Eaters. Since you'll be playing as Sora and Riku in a dream world they don't have partners. In order to remedy that you'll be crafting your own Dream Eaters, which is where you'll be getting your skills from. If you want to get extra crazy you'll be able to pet and feed your Dream Eaters much like Nintendogs.
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| The Cyber Yog is just one of many Pokemon knock-offs you can pet. |
The gameplay itself doesn't stray much from the rest of the series, but it most closely resembles the gameplay in Birth By Sleep. Sora and Riku each wield keyblades, which you can swing with the push of a button. Chaining hits together will get you into a combo. When you add skills into the mix the combat gets a fair amount deeper. A set amount of skills can be equipped to your command deck, which you will be able to cycle through in battle. Some of them are special keyblade attacks, while the others are magic. Combining all of this stuff together makes for a fun combat system that has a reasonable amount of depth for those looking to find it.
Sora and Riku don't fight very differently, but have totally different plot lines that end up converging in the end. In an attempt to have two simultaneous stories someone came up with the drop system, which absolutely sucks. Every twenty minutes no matter what you're doing the game forces you to switch between the two characters, which makes the story even harder to follow for absolutely no reason. When this happens in battle you'll have to do the entire thing all over again, which is a serious pain in the ass. Sure, you can up the time limit a little bit, but it never stops it from getting in the way of the experience. I don't see why they couldn't do what Birth By Sleep did where you just do one story at a time. Then again, I'm not a game designer.
I had a fun time playing Birth By Sleep and it got me super pumped up for Kingdom Hearts 3. What I had issues with were all of the things that the series seems to be actively doing to make itself obtuse. Let's just hope that Kingdom Hearts 3 is the next game and not another random non-numbered sequel.
The Last Story
Earlier in the year we saw the release of Xenoblade Chronicles here in the U.S. Now, a mere four months later we are finally seeing another Wii title targeted by Project Rainfall. Once again, we don't know if the release of the game and the mass outcry related to Project Rainfall were related, but I'd like to think that they were.
I'm going to go on record here and say that Xenoblade wasn't exactly all it was cracked up to be. Sure it was a pretty good game, but it wasn't some super next level game or anything. Yes, it did do some awesome ideas on how to make JRPG gameplay better and more efficient and I appreciate that.
Considering the way I feel about Xenoblade I wasn't expecting a whole lot from The Last Story, but what I got was pleasantly surprising. The plot is that of a standard JRPG, but the gameplay is something else entirely. By that I mean that the combat is interesting, but not exactly super great. Have you ever wanted to play a third person cover based shooter, but instead of having guns all of the characters have swords? Perhaps you wanted some of them to cast magic? If so, then The Last Story is the game for you.
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| You'll be in cover often during battle. |
Yeah, that's right. The Last Story is a third person cover based JRPG. You control the main character Zael who has gained the mysterious power of The Outsider. In battle the power allows him to glow blue, which pulls all aggro towards him. In the beginning all you can do is attack with your sword, duck behind cover, roll, shoot a bow, and use the power of The Outsider, which doesn't really leave room for a whole lot of strategy. Therefore you have to go buck wild on the enemy with your sword until they die.
As the game progresses Zael will gain abilities that make the battles much more interesting. Your magicians, along with the enemies leave behind magic circles when they cast spells. If you hold down the attack button you will be sent to a bird's eye view of the battle, where you have been turned into a targeting reticle. If you target a magic circle Zael will use his Gale Slash to break it. Depending on what type of magic was cast various buffs and debuffs will occur.
Eventually you'll be able to issue orders to your party members. It's a shame that you can't give them strategies, because you can only have them use skills or run away. Zael gets more skills, but none of them are super useful. He is able to run up walls, but I think I only ended up doing that a total of three times in the game and it was during a boss fight where I had to. The reason I say the gameplay isn't super great is because it shoots for strategic combat, but misses entirely. Strategy is very rarely, if ever required to win a battle. I often found myself mashing my sword attacks until the enemy was dead, while occasionally breaking magic circles. It's weird, because there was a lot of setup for a very strategic game it's just not executed properly. Almost as if the designers didn't know how to make the battles strategic.
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| Should we break the magic circle, or break the magic circle? Strategy! |
I had a lot of fun fighting battles in The Last Story, although I guess a lot of people didn't. The game defaults to having you auto attack as soon as you get near an enemy. I did that for the first battle, and it sucked. It made it feel like I had absolutely no control over what was going on. That's why I think that anyone thinking about playing the game should switch the controls to manual. It makes the game a whole lot more enjoyable.
Outside of the battle system I really liked the first half of the game. For some reason the chapter format and color scheme reminded me a lot of Resonance of Fate, another JRPG with interesting battle mechanics. However, unlike Resonance of Fate the story of The Last Story makes sense. Zael is a part of a band of mercenaries. It's their overall goal to become knights. Early on in the game Zael falls in love with a mysterious girl (SURPRISE!) and from that moment on his life changes. The game's plot eventually sees Zael and crew entering the castle and mingling with all of the nobles. Also there's war (SURPRISE AGAIN!).
The plot starts off innocent enough, but then like most JRPGS the plot gets needlessly convoluted and totally stupid near the end. This is something I've been noticing a lot lately and it's really starting to annoy me. Where the plot of The Last Story does right is in it's characters. They all feel very real and that's not something you get very often in games these days. It sort of helps that they all have british voice actors, because just like in Xenoblade it makes everything feel more foreign than it actually is and that's refreshing. To top it off the game looks incredible for a Wii game, but the frame rate is a total disaster. So maybe it wasn't worth having it look so good?
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| The Last Story could have benefited from the higher specs of the PS3 and the 360. |
Oh yeah it's also got some multiplayer.... It's uhhh not so great...
NEXT MONTH IS GOING TO RULE!
Thus concludes another segment of Game Time. I hope that you enjoyed my complaint riddled descriptions. If these games weren't exciting enough for you, then perhaps September will have more to offer. I know for certain that I'll be playing an obscene amount of Borderlands 2, along with Tokyo Jungle. I'm most certainly going to throw in some One Piece Pirate Warriors for good measure. So look forward to that.
See you in a month for another one of these and probably before that with something entirely different.
-Manny
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