Game Time - July 2018

Game: Octopath Traveler

Developer: Square Enix and Acquire

Platform: Switch

I am always waiting for new JRPG releases to whisk me away to an interesting world where I lose hours of my life. Much to my dismay Octopath Traveler did not do that for me. Prior to its release I had seen a whole lot of Internet chatter about how the game feels disjointed due to the eight characters each having their own stories while never truly interacting. Once I got my hands on the final release, I felt the same. In theory a game telling eight separate stories could be awesome, but because you can't play straight through a single characters story without a ton of grinding for levels it requires you to sample many different stories, so a true flow never develops.

The battle system is quite enjoyable. It's like a mix between Shin Megami Tensei and Bravely Default. Each turn your four party members will gain a bonus point. Like Bravely Default you can use these bonus points to attack up to four times, or power up a skill four times. The SMT comes in when you attack enemy weaknesses. Certain weapon types and elemental damage will break enemies after they are attacked enough times, which makes them unable to attack while decreasing their defense. It's a fun system that requires you to figure out each enemies weakness and whether or not you want to take a fight slow, or unleash attacks in rapid succession to break enemies faster.

I really want to like Octopath Traveler, but nothing about it is particularly grabbing me. It seems as if a great deal of love and care went into the game and it's sold enough copies worldwide to back up that claim. I'm going to keep chipping away at it, but I find myself not wanting to play for more than a handful of minutes at a time. Perhaps once Dragon Quest XI hits my JRPG thirst will finally be quenched. 

Game: WarioWare: Gold

Developer: Intelligent Systems

Platform: 3DS

I have always loved the WarioWare franchise. In an era where Nintendo wasn't really trying to put out a bunch of new things WarioWare was a shining beacon of hope. It was supremely weird and introduced great characters like the pizza delivery girl Mona, and the haunted girl we all love, Ashley. It's the kind of unabashed strangeness that I really love from Japanese games. The concept is that Wario needs money, so he hires his "friends" to make 3- 5 second mini-games known as microgames in order to get rich quick. With little to no instruction the player goes through tons of microgames trying not to fail. It's fast paced and manic, while still managing to be fun.

The franchise hadn't seen a new entry in many years, so when I saw that a new one was coming out I was ecstatic. WarioWare: Gold acts as a greatest hits collection for the franchise. It offers tons of new microgames and even a few new characters, but it also grabs fan favorites from the original, WarioWare Touched, and WarioWare Twisted. They are separated into categories of mash, touch, and twist. At first they're kept separate, but in later challenges you're forced to switch between all three.

It took me a total of three hours to beat the "story," however I loved every minute of it. I've been going back and playing it a bunch because there is an achievement system and I feel like I need to do them all. It's cool to see Nintendo continuing to put out new games in the WarioWare franchise. Hopefully this was a test to see if they should continue producing it for the Switch. 

Game: Dead Cells

Developer: Motion Twin

Platform: PC (Also on Xbox One, PS4, and Switch)

Buzz about Dead Cells started when it first entered early access last year. I personally try to steer clear of early access games that seem interesting, because I usually tend to play them a ton and then get bored before all the content is added. I didn't do this with Dead Cells. I bought it pretty much right away and thought it was awesome. Then, news of the full release in early August happened and I started playing it all over again! Dead Cells rules and if you'tr not playing it then you're a criminal!

I feel like the phrase "smooth controls" is overused in the video games industry, but with Dead Cells it truly applies. Moving around the character is effortless and feels amazing. You play as a weird guy who seems to be dead, but also can't really die. It's a roguelike, so you run through some randomly generated stages, but when you die you have to start back at the beginning. Like many others of its ilk you collect a permanent currency (cells), which you use to purchase upgrades to make each subsequent run easier.  I've been playing it a ton and I don't see myself slowing down any time soon. There are so many intersting places to explore and secrets to uncover. Like, why are there so many doors all over each level that you can knock on? They have to be for something!

I don't really know what to say other than you should totally play Dead Cells. It's on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Switch. The Switch version seems to be having some issues later in the game, but they seem to be working to fix that. It seems like it's doing very well, which is cool because I can't wait to see this developer make another game. Dead Cells is the best roguelike in ages, which is saying a lot, because we're basically drowning in them at this point.  

Game Time - July 2017

This past weekend I went on a trip for a close friend's bachelor party. We went white water rafting, which is a bit out of my element. Despite that, I had an absolute blast. However, I did end up getting quite a spectacular sunburn. Even my knees are burnt... I am here now fighting through the discomfort to tell you all about what I played in July!

I am here now to fight through the mild discomfort and let you know what I've been doing. It's game time!

Spaltoon 2

When Splatoon 2 was first unveiled I was both excited and disappointed. I enjoyed the original quite a bit, but 2 just looked to be more of the same. Sometimes this works out for games, but the reason I liked Splatoon so much was because it was a rare new IP from Nintendo. Even more rare was the fact that it reached ridiculous levels of popularity on a struggling console (The Wii-U).

Now that Sapltoon 2 is out I can say that my initial disappointment has faded. I can't lie, it is certainly more Splatoon. Thankfully there are enough new guns, maps, and modes to keep me interested. The core gameplay is still the same as the original. You are squid kid and you need to shoot your ink all over the stage. The team with the most ink in the stage at the end wins. It's a simple concept, but it works surprisingly well. Some old stages return, but there are a fair amount of new ones as well. The same goes for weapons. The new weapon I enjoy the most consists of two pistols, called the splat dualies. They let you move quickly, and roll out of the way of enemy attacks.

Everybody gets merced by the Splat Dualies.

As for modes, the single player is a bit more involved this time around. It's still a bit weird though, because there are a ton of mechanics introduced in it that are never seen anywhere else. The new mode I enjoy the most though is the co-op hoard mode called Salmon Run. You team up with three other players to shoot down a bunch of Salmon and collect their golden eggs. It starts off relatively easy, but as you rank up it gets incredibly difficult. The bummer is that for some ungodly reason it's not available all the time. I just don't think any game modes should be locked behind a timer. Despite odd design choices like that, Splatoon continues to be a shining example of how stylish and interesting Nintendo can be.

Pyre

Pyre is Supergiant's third release. They started off with the action game Bastion, and then moved onto the strategy game Transistor. As crazy as it is, Pyre is another genre. It mixes visual novel and weird fantasy basketball. Very rarely do studios change up the games they make after each iteration, which is one of the things I love about Supergiant. There are things that you can always count on though, like beautiful art, and a well developed world.

The game takes place in a purgatory-esque place known as the Downside. People who have wronged or broken the law in the civilization called the commonwealth are banished and forced to live out their remaining days in the downside. That is, until you as a reader arrive. You as the player were cast down, because you learned how to read. The ability to read is forbidden, and you were found out. A group of weary travelers finds you broken in the downside and takes you in. Upon finding out about your ability to read they ask you to read a tome for them, which starts you on your path to freedom.

The rites start off easy, but get much more challenging.

You participate in a series of trials called the rites, which is the main focus of the game. In each rite you control three characters, but only one can move at a time. You start near your "pyre" which is a large flame that acts as your goal. At the beginning a large celestial orb drops in the center, and the goal is to run it into the enemies pyre. When you have the orb all you can do is jump, but without it you have an aura that if it hits enemies will remove them from play for a few seconds. There are a myriad of rules, but after a few games it;s easy to figure out what's going on.

The reason you're doing the trials is to earn freedom. After prevailing enough times you'll be given the option to send one of your party members back to the Commonwealth. The choices drove me nuts. On the one hand I really liked some of the characters, but on the other you're sending them away so you can't use or interact with them anymore. On the other hand you can fail the rites as well, but the game continues on anyways. It's an interesting experience that requires a lot of reading to get through, but in my opinion it was well worth it!

Kingdom Hearts Final Mix

I've been wanting to replay the original Kingdom Hearts for a long time, but I'm only getting around to it now. I don't have a lot to play right now, and the reveal that Toy Story 3 will be in Kingdom Hearts 3 got me really fired up about the series in general. I think once I finish it I'll record a podcast for next month with my thoughts on it as a whole after a full replay. In my mind Kingdom Hearts is still my favorite of all the games in the franchise. Back when the original came out it was such an interesting idea to marry Final Fantasy and Disney together in a brand new universe. At that time it was a simple story of light vs. darkness that got a whole lot more convoluted as the series wore on.

The reason I wanted to replay it was to see if my memories of the game were accurate. I personally always liked the original game more than Kingdom Hearts 2. Whenever I say that to anyone they scoff and don't understand my reasoning. As I stated above the idea of the original game is very innocent, but it's more than that. I think the gameplay is more fun. Playing this HD version now I still believe that. Kingdom Hearts 2 did add a lot to the combat, but it also dumbed it down at the same time with reaction commands. As much as I liked hitting triangle to see Sora bust out some cool moves it made every fight way easier. Sure the combat in the original is a lot of mashing the attack button, but the more abilities you get the deeper the combat becomes.

The original is simple, but in a good way.

This trip down memory lane has been fun for me so far, but a few things make me want to scream. For starters the camera is not great. Even with the added ability in the HD version to manually control the camera it still gets stuck a whole lot. It often feels like the real fight is with the camera as opposed to the enemies. I get that though, the game is old. The thing I can't excuse is how terrible Donald and Goofy's AI is during fights. Yes, you can change their tendencies, but it doesn't help. I have Donald set to use offensive magic as little as possible. Somehow he still enters every fight and then blows all of his MP spamming gravity. For a while in the beginning the two of them would enter every battle and then immediately die. It was baffling. Now that I've leveled up a bunch it isn't that bad, but man is it every frustrating.

I have not finished yet, but I stand by my words. I think Kingdom Hearts is better than Kingdom Hearts 2.

Waiting for the end

Normally there are a few things throughout August that I want to play, but somehow this year all three of the games I want in August come out right at the end. The new Uncharted DLC comes out the 22nd, but both Mario X Rabbids Kingdom Battle and Yakuza Kiwami come out on the 29th. So I don't really know how next month's edition will work out. I guess I could go really hard on these new games for a few days, but I might just wait to talk about them until the following month. I have no idea, but I look forward to seeing you next time.

Game Time - July 2016

I'm going to be real with you guys. I'm going to say a lot of mean things in this edition of game time. I initially thought that this would be a hype filled month where I'd regale you with tales of the dope JRPGs I've been playing. Instead I'm going to tell you about how I hate one of them, and think the other one is average at best.

Don't worry though, because Monster Hunter is still awesome. It hasn't let me down yet! I've got a lot to get off of my chest this month, so let's get right into it.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

I love Star Ocean as a series, but man do I not really like this game. The original Star Ocean was okay, I really liked 2 and 3, but 4 was a complete train wreck. 5 isn't much better in my eyes. To be honest after 4 I was not expecting there to ever be another Star Ocean, but there is and it was made on a shoestring budget. The action battle system is alive and intact. I'd actually say it's the only thing I like about the game. I used to have a lot of trouble linking skills and canceling, but now it seems like you can spam the same attack to get a cancel bonus, so it's really easy to do tons of damage at a time. I look forward to battles, because I enjoy beating down monsters and trying out new skills.

You know what I don't like about Star Ocean 5? Literally everything else. I don't even know where to begin with this one. One of my favorite parts of playing RPGs is that the characters are developed over the course of the game. Let's take the main character Fidel as an example. I'm right before the final dungeon and you know what I know about him? His name is Fidel, he has blue hair, he's way into swords, his dad's name is Daril, and he inexplicably wants to protect a little girl he knows almost nothing about. That's pretty much it. It's infuriating. Normally the game's personal action system would fill in any gaps in character development, but that doesn't happen either. All the characters do is talk about random things like how much they love cats. The most upsetting part to me is that the entire game revolves around Fidel's quest to help out a girl he finds randomly named Relia. Despite the fact that he knows nothing about her, he makes it his life goal to protect her. This leads to him throwing a bunch of tantrums. There's no conceivable reason he or any of the other characters should care as much as they do. I could rage about the terrible characters and plot forever, but it's best if I move on.

At least battling is fun.

The budget of Star Ocean 5 was undoubtedly small, but some of the design choices they made were questionable. You know what's a good way to make me not pay attention to any dialogue ever? Make it so I can move around the environment and spam emotes. You can do that. So instead of seeing the characters talk up close and personal I'm standing there as Fidel clapping like an idiot every scene. Yes, this is my fault, but there could have at least been cinematic camera work or something. It's weird, because two scenes in the game did have a cinematic camera and they looked really good.

The flow of the game is dreadful, and every time I got somewhere I cringed, because I knew I'd have to immediately walk back to where I was previously. The story flows like this. Go to a new place, realize that what you need to do it really back where you were before, go back to the old place, find out about a new place. That's the game. It constantly has you go back to the same areas over and over again. There are very few areas in the game, so they needed to have you go to them over and over. It wouldn't be so bad if every single map wasn't huge and empty. If you're going to have a wide open map at least fill it with something. This could have been mitigated by giving access to a fast travel system early in the game. Instead they wait for what seems like an eternity to give you fast travel, and then take it away in the next story scene you get to. Then you have to play for another eternity to get it back. By the time I got fast travel permanently I no longer wanted to play the game.

There are way too many scenes like this.

I wanted to love this game, but I just can't do it. So many things about it drive me absolutely nuts. I'm still glad I picked it up, because the battle system is fun. It's classic Star Ocean. I just hope that Tri Ace is allowed to make a bigger and better Star Ocean next time. Hopefully there's a next time...

I Am Setsuna

My favorite game of all time is Chrono Trigger. So when I heard that a new game was being developed with the same ATB ( Active Time Battle) system I was super excited. I was even more excited to know that Square-Enix opened the new developer Toky RPG Factory to make new games in the same vein as the Super Nintendo RPGs I hold so dear. At first glace it seems like they succeeded in making a SNES RPG in modern times, but under the surface there's a solid game that doesn't deliver on the feelings of old.

Don't get me wrong, I like the game. At first I thought I was being overly critical, but after a lot of thought I feel like there are fundamental problems with the game. The battle system is spot on. It feels and plays like Chrono Trigger. You wait for the bar to fill up and then you can attack. Characters can team up to do special dual, and triple techs. There's even an added layer to the combat called momentum. If you don't attack right when you're able to you can add additional bonuses to your attacks with a well timed button press. It's a fun addition that sometimes feels a little too powerful. Where the game falls apart for me is both its lack of characterization and variety.

Sometimes the Chrono Trigger references are a little on the nose.

The story of I Am Setsuna is one that RPG fans have heard before. Monsters are invading the land and the only way to calm them is to have a sacrifice travel across the land and offer themselves to some unknown being. This isn't the issue though. Where things go awry for me is that the characters are all interesting, but the pacing and writing of the game don't allow the characters to develop as they need to. In Chrono Trigger I felt like I intimately knew each character by the end. In I Am Setsuna I'm right before the final boss and I know very little about each character. Most of them are surface level archetypes and nothing more. I can't quite put my finger on why they all seem so flat. Part of it is definitely the pacing. Everything moves along so fast that before you know it you have a full party of characters. It's not easy to develop seven characters all at once.

The entire game takes place in a snowy land accompanied by a piano only soundtrack. I love the music and the snow covered land, but it definitely leaves me wanting some more variety. As I made my way through the game I found the setting enjoyable. What made me like it less was when I had to revisit literally every area I had been to previously in order to unlock chests that you can't unlock until near the end of the game. Then after doing that I now have to go back to many areas for a third time in order to finish the end game sidequets. Once is fine, but three times per area is way too many. It's made even worse by the fact that you can't quickly exit areas and have to backtrack all the way through them to exit. It really starts to grate after awhile, which is why I haven't finished the game yet.

The game is beautiful, but the environments have little variation.

I understand that this is Tokyo RPG Factory's first game and that they had a relatively low budget. I hope that this game sells well enough that they're able to take another stab at making a nostalgic RPG. I feel like I Am Setsuna gets so close to what I want, but falls just short of the mark. I Am Setsuna is a solid game, but it's not the JRPG classic I was hoping it would be.

Monster Hunter Generations

You know what's great? Monster Hunter. I feel like I no longer need to say that Monster Hunter is a hard game to get into. I feel like people know that now. It's cool that it's becoming more popular over here in the U.S. but it's still not some huge mainstream success. What's interesting to me is that the developers of the series actually seem to be trying to broaden its appeal as opposed to catering exclusively to the crowd they know they already have s stranglehold on. The newest game in the franchise is called Monster Hunter Generations, but it should really be called Monster Hunter: Greatest Hits. It's got all the old Monsters you love, and a few new ones that you'll probably enjoy fighting. You can still use all of the old weapons you're used to as well, but now there are multiple styles and what are essentially super moves.

That's right, Monster Hunter has super moves now and they're pretty rad. They're called Hunter Arts, and you charge them up over the course of a hunt. They have a wide variety of effects, but they all look flashy. You can use anywhere between one and three Hunter Arts depending on which of the styles you are using for your weapon. In previous iterations there was one way to use your weapon, but now every weapon has four styles, which broadens the depth of each weapon quite a bit. The issue that I'm running into is that I feel that some of the styles make the game too easy, but I'm still enjoying myself.

The Malfestio is a cool new owl monster.

The first style is the traditional Guild style. If you have played Monster Hunter before, then this is what you're used to. It's the same, so if you're adverse to change you're going to be rocking this style a lot. Next up we have the Striker style, which is the one I'm most unfamiliar with. It's essentially Guild style with a few less moves. The tradeoff is that you can equip three Hunter Arts and they charge a lot quicker. The third style is my personal favorite, which is Aerial style. Since I use Great Sword we'll take that as an example. Normally you can charge your strikes up on the ground to do a ton of damage, but in Aerial you can only charge while in the air. In this style the dodge button lets you vault off things to get a ton of air. This allows you to mount monsters all the time, and it's a ton of fun to jump around like an idiot. Finally we have Adept style, which I feel will end up being the elitist style. Essentially if you dodge right before a monster hits you it's possible to dodge out of the way and do a powerful counter attack. Timing the dodge properly is important, so you need to learn a monster in and out to be effective with the style.

It's cool that there are so many more options for each weapon in this game. The bummer is that I feel like the weapons were all made equal in terms of damage. What I mean by this is that Great Swords used to be a power house, but now they do about the same as someone using the dual blades. It's cool that the game is more balanced, but now there's no real reason to use one of the slower weapons over something that hits faster and just as hard. Yes, I can still break parts better, but I'm a fan of huge damage. I hope that this is changed back in the next true iteration of Monster Hunter, but we'll have to wait and see.

Welcome to the space jam!

Like I said in the beginning, this is akin to the greatest hits album of Monster Hunter. If you've never been into the series before there has never been a better time to join in on the fun. Hunting monsters is exhilarating once you learn the basics.

What does the future hold?

Approximately 800 million games I want to play very badly come out in September, which means I have about one month left of not playing a whole bunch of games left ahead of me. Next week No Man's Sky finally drops, so I can see what the heck it's actually all about. I'll probably end up streaming a bunch of it, because it seems like the kind of random exploration that would be fun to do with some company.

Other than that the only thing that's on my radar is God Eater 2. I feel like it came out forever ago in Japan, which is probably true. Now that I'm way deep into Monster Hunter I don't really like the clones of it, so we'll see if I outgrew God Eater as well. Hopefully not, because I enjoyed the hell out of the original game despite the fact that it was on the PSP.

Ohh, just kidding. King of Fighters XIV comes out at some point as well. The demo is a lot of fun. It's like they took the KOF I love and made it possible for regular humans to play and enjoy!

See you guys next month!

Game Time - July 2014

July was an insanely good month for gaming. It somehow turned into ridiculous anime game month even though I didn't mean for it to.

I started off by playing Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn for an unhealthy amount of time. It came out on the 1st, so I was able to start the month off with a real banger. I blew up over 100,000 robots and it was glorious! The games in the Dynasty Warriors Gundam series will forever hold a special place in my heart. There's something magical about decimating thousands of robots with little to no resistance.

After I started winding down from my Dynasty Warriors Gundam high I played a bit of One Piece Unlimited World Red. I intended to play it more than the two times I did, but became distracted by what is now one of my favorite franchises of all time.

I don't remember when in the month it was, but I decided to check the E-shop on the 3DS. That was when I noticed that Inazuma Eleven was on sale because of the world cup. It was only $10 and I had been wanting to try it for a long time. I don't really like soccer, but I am way into anime and games with RPG elements. I promptly downloaded it and ended up playing it for hours. I now have a new obsession that consumes most of my waking thought...

Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn

I don't know that there's a whole lot I can Say about this game. It's another Dynasty Warriors Gundam game. It's the fourth one to be exact. You play as Gundam pilot controlling a Gundam. You walk around a map and push square about a billion times and all the enemy robots around you blow up. It's great! If you don't know anything about the series I wrote up something about the previous game, which you can check out here.

So while I don't really need to describe its appeal I should talk about what's different with it. Obviously there are new Gundams and pilots, but the game itself is actually a bit different as well. The main difference comes with the way you upgrade the Gundams themselves. In the third game you just got blueprints after a battle. In this you still get blueprints, but now they're for specific parts like arms, legs, torso, and head. You can combine them in order to make complete blueprints with all the parts. The combining is actually kind of confusing and I'm still not quite used to it. Each body part can only have two stat boosts, so you need to be careful when combining or you'll often end up making your Gundam worse than it previously was.

This image perfectly captures the spirit of Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn.

The way you unlock characters and Gundams is a bit different as well. The game uses a card based system. There is a list of cards in the game and they all have an objective on them. So for example some cards may say you need to beat a specific mission in order to unlock the card. Once you do that you'll gain the card and whatever benefits come from it. This means you'll often need to go to the card list to see what you need to be doing. Some of the stuff is insane, so I don't know if I'll ever be able to 100% this game like I did the last one. To get all the cards you have to be every Gundam and Mobile suit in the game at least five times and blow up at least 2,000 enemies with each, which is bananas. There are so many more Gundams in this game than the previous entry, which was already an insanely large roster.

I'm impressed that Tecmo Koei somehow makes each game in this franchise bigger and better than the last. I was a bit disappointed they didn't dub this game into English though. One of my favorite things to do was make fun of the English voice acting, but this time I just have to settle for reading the corny lines. I'm just glad that they're still putting these games out in the U.S. at all, because I can't imagine they sell extremely well. Hopefully in a year or two I'll be able to once again tell you about my Dynasty Warriors Gundam exploits with a brand new game.


One Piece Unlimited World Red

I played Unlimited World Red twice, but they were two four hour sessions. I got a pretty good feel for what the game is and I like it. Initially when I heard about it people were describing it as a One Piece themed version of Monster Hunter. This isn't entirely accurate, but it's not super far off. It does have a lot of Monster Hunter Elements embedded in it. You do fight large bosses, some of which are creatures, but it's not the focal point of the game.

Most of the time you're wandering around various environments seen in the show. You'll be taken to such locales as Albasta, and Marineford. If you're a fan of the show you'll recognize everything, if not then you wouldn't be playing this game anyways. It's in the original Japanese with subtitles, so Namco Bandai clearly knows the audience that they're targeting with this release.

If you can name these four characters you'll probably want to buy this game.

In each locale you'll be collecting materials much like in Monster Hunter. You do this by breaking boxes, and hitting trees. You can also catch bugs and fish. The locales are generally wide open and you'll fight a bunch of smaller enemies as you traverse through them. The combat is akin to Dynasty Warriors where you do basic attack combos by pushing square and triangle. You also have special moves, which can be used to do things to the environment as well. In fact, the entire game seems kind of like it's just Dynasty Warriors where the enemies take more hits and you collect a bunch of items for crafting like in Monster Hunter.

The reason you're collecting stuff is so that you can make expand the hub town. You'll need various things in order to construct buildings and upgrade them. Buildings will give you access to new things to do, such as shop, play mini-games, and take on quests. The quests are very similar to Monster Hunter in that you have a rank, which will increase the more you do. There's even a restaurant, which grants stat bonuses through the combining of various foods.

The game is all about making this town better.

The plot is unique to the game. A pirate named Red is messing with Luffy and the crew. He is able to pull from their memories and bring their thoughts into physical space. Due to this ability most of what I played so far involves the Straw Hat crew reliving some of the more memorable fights from the anime. It seems like an excuse to put all the old enemies in the game while still technically having a "new" story.

I bought this game for two reasons. The first being that I am a die-hard One Piece fan. The second was so that I could play multiplayer with a friend. It turns out that the only multiplayer in the PS3 version is local, so I won't be doing any of that. I probably should have gotten the Vita or 3DS version of the game if I had known. I do still enjoy the game though. It's interesting, because it doesn't seem like a generic cash grab, which most anime games tend to be. It's trying to do something unique and while it doesn't entirely succeed it's still super interesting. If you're a One Piece fan you should definitely pick it up!

Inazuma Eleven

There was a time a few years ago when I started looking into the Inazuma Eleven franchise. It sounded super appealing to me. A game about a middle school soccer team in Japan who essentially have superhuman abilities. It even had RPG elements to boot! I thought it looked pretty cool, but much to my dismay the game had only been Released in Japan, and Europe. Since the first 2 games were on DS I could have imported them, but the price was a little more than I wanted to pay for a complete unknown.

Fast forward to a few weekends ago when I happened upon the original game for ten dollars on the 3DS eshop. Earlier this year Level 5 finally decided it was time to give the franchise a run in America. In order to do so they put an enhanced version of Inazuma Eleven on the eshop for $20. When I happened upon it the World Cup was going on, so it was only $10. I knew that I had to buy it. What I didn't expect was for the game to consume my every waking thought.

Welcome to my new obsession!

The first night I played the game I only intended to try it out, but I ended up playing for six hours straight. Something about it hooked me immediately and it still hasn't let me go. What's crazy is that I don't really like soccer. However, when you take soccer and basically make it an anime I'm apparently all for it. Real soccer players can't call exploding penguins out of the ground, or make a soccer ball burst into flames because they kicked it so hard!

So what is Inazuma Eleven? I'm glad you asked! It's a soccer RPG developed by Level 5. There are now 6 games in the series, and an anime that follows the plot line of the games. All 6 are out in Japan, 4 of them are released in Europe, and there's just the original here in the United States. In the game you play as the Raimon Middle School soccer club. At first they're terrible and the club is in danger of being disbanded, but through a series of coincidences and hard work they turn everything around and end up thwarting and evil plan that threatens to ruin the soccer that they love so much!

I know this probably sounds like I'm messing around, but I'm not. I legitimately love this series. There are two kinds of soccer matches in the game. There are standard 11 on 11 matches, and then there are the 4 vs. 4 random battles. Yes, there are random soccer battles in this game! Yes, that is the best thing ever! You control your players with the DS stylus. Drawing lines from them will make them move and tapping the screen will make them pass the ball. Sounds pretty basic right? Well then you add in special moves. When your player comes into contact with an opposing player the game pauses and gives you some choices. If you have the ball you can either dodge, charge, or use a special move. Dodging will have a low success rate, while charging will have a higher success rate, but you're more likely to foul. Alternatively you could use a ridiculous special move that consumes TP, which is essentially this game's magic. The same thing happens if you're going against someone with the ball, but it changes to tackle and slide tackle. You can also do special shots!

HIS LEG CATCHES ON FIRE AND IT'S AWESOME!

As you play your team levels up and learns skills, and it's just the most magical time ever. To make it even better there's a Pokemon-like quality to the game. There are over 1,000 players you can recruit and they even have elements associated with them. Each played is either Fire, Wind, Wood, or Air and that determines what type of players they're strong against. The whole system was basically made for me, and the fact that it's all so over the top and filled with crazy characters makes it even better. Right now I probably sound like a mad man, and I feel like I'm just typing stream of consciousness like some kind of lunatic. I haven't enjoyed a game this much in a very long time. It's like someone made this series specifically for me.

Now as I said the first game is the only one that has been released here in the U.S. Lucky for me the second game was for DS, which was not region locked. I imported the 2nd game and have already played that for over 50 hours as well.

So Much More Inazuma Eleven

The third game in the series came out last year in Europe. While it was released for the DS in Japan it was sadly released for the 3DS in Europe. Much to my dismay the 3DS is region locked, so I had to import a European 3DS. Yes, that's right. I imported a 3DS from England so I could play the remaining 2 English Inazuma Eleven games I have yet to consume. In fact for the past few days I've been playing Inazuma Eleven 3 on my hot new European 3DS.

As we speak the first game in the Inazuma Eleven Go series (The 4th game overall) is en route to my house from jolly old England. Yes, I have played over 100 hours of this series over the course of 3 weeks. Yes, I have spend over $400 dollars purchasing these games and a 3DS. I regret absolutely none of it. I can't get enough of this series, and if my insane madman-like lunacy wasn't enough for you this week you can look forward to some other Inazuma Eleven related content in the coming weeks. I'm going to keep playing these games and it doesn't look like I'm going to be done any time soon.

In terms of other video games I'll be playing Tales of Xillia 2 when it launches halfway through August, and I'll also be getting the re-release of Disgaea 4 on the Vita, so that my Vita can finally get some love. I'll be back at the end of August to regale you with tales of those games and even more Inazuma Eleven!

     -Manny