Panzer Dragoon Saga

With its compelling story and cinematic battles, Panzer Dragoon Saga is one of the most unique RPG's ever made.

Known in Japan as Azel, Panzer Dragoon RPG, it was released in 1998 on the Sega Saturn by Project Andromeda, it was the latest entry in the popular rail shooter series on the commercially unsuccessful console. Though this time, Andromeda decided to create a very different game, but with a few similarities to its predecessors for some familiarity. Despite being a critical darling, and being considered one of the best RPGS and video games of all time, and earned a spot at #22 on G4's 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time, this game failed to sell because it was released very late in the Sega Saturn's lifetime. The game was released in April, and the console was discontinued in August, only 30,000 copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga were sold in the US, and any English copy of the game is rare and can run you at least $300 USD on sites like Ebay, making this a collector's item.

Story:

Taking place in a post-apocalyptic world, you play as Edge, a young solder who is in a group charged with protecting an excavation site. All seems well until an evil monster attacks you. While escaping this creature, you then stumble upon what appears to be a girl sticking out of the wall. Before you know what this is, some imperial troops come and attack your group. These troops are led by the evil Craymen and they ruthlessly kill everyone and take the wall containing the girl. In a fit of rage, you try to attack the soldiers and you are then shot off the cliff down into a ravine.

Apparently unharmed, you wander around confused and run into a mysterious dragon who seems that he wants to help you. You have some strange spiritual connection with the dragon and you place your trust in him, and the dragon whisks you out of the ravine and takes you to your captain. As you watch your beloved captain die, you vow to go on a revenge to kill Craymen and you and the dragon go off on your search for Craymen and try to solve the mystery behind that girl.

The game is largely voice acted, but it seems like Team Andromeda cut some corners on the localization by keeping the Japanese voices, instead of dubbing it over. Luckily they have subtitles.

Gameplay

While the previous Panzer Dragoon games are rail shooters, Saga is an RPG with mostly free-roaming exploration. There are two modes of exploration: flight, and on foot. On foot exploration is where you control Edge, and mostly takes place in towns. Towns serve the typical RPG purpose of collecting information on where to go, and can sometimes buy items. The game carries over some of its rail-shooting roots by having you call up a targeting cursor to select items or people. All of the dialog in the game is voice acted. The opening movie is in a made up language that's unique for the series, but the rest of the in-game voices are spoken in Japanese with English subtitles, which is sort of confusing with why they're different.

Flight exploration is basically this game's version of dungeons. You control the dragon and you fly around full 3D environments and can fly in any direction. Similar to foot exploration, you have the targeting cursor to select item chests, suspicious places, and target the save machines. Many of these dungeons also have some kind of puzzle that allows you to progress further into the dungeon. These dungeons feature the typical random encounters that everyone either hates or tolerates. This is where the game gets even more unique.

The game features a strange, and very unique and very cinematic battle system. The game is sort of in real time, and you have 3 bars that fill up over time, and sort of like the ATB system in Final Fantasy games, when a bar is filled, you are able to perform an action in battle. Having all 3 bars filled means you can perform 3 consecutive actions. While you wait for your bar(s) to fill up, you are able to maneuver around the enemies to avoid attacks and target their weak zones. There is a radar on the bottom that indicates: neutral, hazardous, and safe zones. These are subject to change, either from the monsters also able to rotate their position, or from the monsters changing these zones. Safe zones mean you're safe from attack, neutral means you either have a chance of attack, or the monsters use their weaker attacks on you. The hazardous zones mean that you're prone to being heavily attacked by the monster's special move.

With the action gauges, you have three choices: you can either use a basic attack, use a berserk move, or use an item. With the basic attack, you either have a choice between using the dragon's attack to target on a single target, or use Edge's laser to attack several targets. If you have one target, then these lasers will attack the same target multiple times. It's more wise to use Edge's laser to attack since it either does more damage, or attacks multiple enemies, making the battles less time consuming. Berserk moves don't need that much of an explanation, basically it just like your typical RPG magic/special attacks. At the cost of berserk points, you can cast either a really strong attack, or heal yourself. After a battle, it ranks you based on how well you fought and better scores give you more EXP.

Another aspect is dragon transformation and dragon morphing. Transformations only happen at key story points, and your dragon changes shape and becomes stronger. With morphing, you have a giant circular gauge with 4 points: attack, spirit, defense, and speed. You move your cursor around to get your dragon's stats to focus on these various stats, or just have it dead center for balanced stats. These various points also alter how your dragon looks.

Visuals

While they're pretty good for Sega Saturn standards, they look sort of clunky today. Especially since the Sega Saturn's graphics uses quadrilaterals for their polygon rendering instead of triangles like the PS1 and N64. The battle scenes are still very nice, and are sort of like the charm point of the game. The battles are very flashy and the attack sequences are pretty well animated, especially the boss scenes. While flight mode is nice, the lack of the use of fog and the short draw distance sometimes makes distant objects sort of pop up out of nowhere instead of fading in so keep that in mind. The on foot scenes are where the game also shows its age with the characters. So if you can deal with blocky characters, you'll be okay. There are also a few full CGI cutscenes that look very nice compared to the rest of the game.

The environments themselves focus largely on the typical post-apocalyptic scenery, much of the game has a depressing desolate feeling. You venture through hazardous cliffs, vast deserts, and even several ruins that are in the previous environments, and even scattered over a sea. Typical post-apocalyptic signs that a past war has ravaged the entire world.

On foot:

Flight exploration:

Music

The music for it is sort of strange. Unlike other RPG's where the soundtrack is almost entirely of a symphonic nature, Panzer Dragoon Saga seems to range between the standard symphonic music with other songs that are almost tribal sounding. This makes Panzer Dragoon Saga's soundtrack one of the most interesting, adding more to the overall unique feel of the game.

Wings

Atolm Battle Theme

Premonition of War

Verdict:

Panzer Dragoon Saga is definitely one of the most ambitious RPG's ever created, and definitely one of the best swan songs for a video game console, it's a definite must have for anyone who's a fan of RPG's. On a whopping 4 discs with its very unique and innovated gameplay, and amazing cinematic battle system, even several years later, this game still has no counterparts and sits in a RPG world where it is the only game that mixes aspects of a rail-shooter into its battle system. Though since this game had a limited print, you're stuck with three choices: coughing up a few hundred bucks for the game, illegally playing it on a Sega Saturn Emulator (or modding your Saturn to play pirated games), or patiently wait until someone either ports the game and/or remake it, seeing that Team Andromeda is a now defunct company. We all pray that this game will someday see the light of day and get more recognition that it certainly deserves. This isn't a game that's hyped up based on its rarity, it's praised because there is simply no other game like Panzer Dragoon Saga.

Music: 6/10.

Visuals (Or Graphics): 8/10.

Story: 9/10.

Content: 9/10.

Conclusion: 8/10

Dark Souls Review

Dark Souls is infamously known as one of the most difficult games for players, especially in the RPG community of gaming. The game will throw challenges that seem monumental and will also show you no mercy. So how is the game overall and what does it provide to you besides a very good challenge? Well lets check this game out to see just how good this seemingly, as described by many people, impossible game really is and if it worth your money and time in the end.

Story

In the kingdom of Lordran the first flame is dying out, and if not replenished darkness will cover the kingdom. As the chosen undead it is your duty to replenish this flame and escape the Asylum to get to Lordran. You must past through vast lands and defeat many strong enemies along the way and collect the lord souls of the people whom slayed the Dragons ending their age. These people are Gwyn Lord of Cinder, Seath the Scaless, The Witch of Izalith, and The Four Kings. By uniting these souls you hope to stop the first flame from burning as it is your destiny, or is it the one thats truly right as you risk your life dying countless times, not even knowing completely what your sacrifices will do. Only by uniting these souls can you possibly be brought an answer.

Gameplay

Dark Souls plays like what you would expect a adventure RPG to play out as, you roam new areas, defeat big bosses and the enemies before them. However these bosses, even the enemies don't go down easy. Though it is overrated to call this game impossible not knowing what to do will cause you to die more then you thought possible. The game itself requires you to actually think before acting, not charging in like a senseless madman. This is where messages come in to play which can be seen left randomly on the ground when in online mode. This can really be of help giving you an idea of what a boss could be weak against, what moves you should look to be using and just what in general is behind the fog gate.

The interesting aspect of Dark Souls is its "soul" system as I call it. In other RPG's I am sure you are used to getting XP and money after a battle, but thats different in Dark Souls. Your only means of buying equipment and leveling up is how many souls you have. So at times you have to prioritize, do I want new weapons and armor or even titanites to upgrade my weapon or do I want to level up? This is a interesting implication in the game and can get you to really prioritize at times. Not to mention if you die you drop all of your souls were you die, you can recover them but if you die again without doing so they will be gone. This also brings a challenge to the player as losing your souls can really mess you up in the game, especially if you have a lot of souls. It is possible to get souls though from dead bodies and killing bosses. However boss souls require you to prioritize as well. Either you want the rare boss weapon or you want the many souls from the boss soul. Overall the soul system as I call it can really make you think for a while whats best in your current situation, and what you may need to put off until you get more souls later.

For the most part gameplay is nothing complex, you block, roll, attack, jump etc and that's really it. You can also get poisoned, inflicted with toxic and much more life killing status effects that at times can fill up quite quick and devastate you if you are not careful. Now on to the blocking aspects blocking more useful then you thought in most games. Rolling also helps a lot as well and knowing when to attack and parry will be a big factor to helping you succeed in the game. So for the most part it is best to work on your timing and attacking skills throughout the game as in pure honesty it will make your life throughout the game much more easier. Parrying and backstabbing, or frontstabbing especially as they do massive damage and can really help your cause in a battle. It is indeed good to have a game were things such as blocking, rolling etc are actually important and useful to your survival, not just there for occasional use. 

Bonfires are something interesting added as they are a mean for leveling up, attuning magic, reverse your hollowing, and act as checkpoints for when you die, though some are hidden and take some searching to find. Though overall they do a lot for you and can even be upgraded by sacrificing some of your humanity. This is so that they can replenish your estus flasks, such as a bonfire may be only to replenish five of your ten flasks, but by upgrading it the bonfire can now upgrade ten. Each bonfire also has a firekeeper and killing them is not recommended, if one dies you can still teleport to a bonfire, but you will never be able to use it again.

The blacksmiths play a important role as well, and so do the titanite shards too. The way blacksmiths work is that they can repair, reinforce and modify your equipment. Overtime your weapon, shield, or armor will wear down and break, repairing it prevents that. By reinforcing your equipment you increase stuff like for a sword increase its attack power, for armor increase its defense and much more. Then you have a modify equipment option were you can reinforce your weapons in a special way if you have already reinforced them five times. You can either continue to do this and reinforce to +10, +15 etc or do things such as create magic weapons, divine weapons or boss weapons created from a boss soul if you haven't consumed it yet. In short there is a lot in creating and crafting new weapons and items as well as many other unique weapons just waiting to be found within the game.

Lastly, summoning is also a key feature as well in the game, you can choose to summon a NPC or player through online. You must be human mind you to do this. Summoning can greatly help your cause in general during the boss fights, especially ones like the Bell Gargoyles were there are two of them at once attacking you. One other evidence of this is against Ornstein and Smough in which alone they can be considered the hardest boss in the entire game. Even summoning Solaire, the phantom in the boss area to help the boss fight can still prove challenging. You are also mind you able to summon up to three other people to your aid. Just be careful as you can be invaded in the game as well. You can be invaded by a NPC or a actual player whom plays the game as well, either way both are looking out to kill you.

Music

The game has some pretty nice tracks actually for the monumental bosses you fight. These can range from tranquil tracks that put you in a calm mood or very dangerous ones that make you feel like you are going to die. Either way the game itself provides you with good music you are sure to enjoy. Even the ending boss has a very sorrowful theme, nothing like some monumental epic sounding instrumental just a sorrowful theme that has a sad tone to it as you fight the fallen king Gwyn. Either way you will really get a great deal of enjoyment from the music within the game that can really bring out the feelings and emotions of whats happening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs59egXnb3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB6sOhQan9Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsps0I58yUM

Graphics

The graphics in this game are pretty good and the visuals in some areas are really nice. One key support for this is the appearance of "Anor Londo" the used to be main city where people like Gwyn himself ruled. Some other areas show some nice things as well while others it seems there could have been more for. Lost Izalith is sort of a lackluster area and does not show much do it and there is also repetitive enemies as opposed to the Demon Ruins that borders it were there is a bit more to fight. Not to mention Bed of Chaos is more of a frustrating boss rather then one thats going to challenge you so the overall area can be a disappointment. It just feels like the area could have been expanded more and could have had more to it. Now an area that had good to it but suffered from problems is Blighttown. The area is quite large and quite interesting as you traverse through the makeshift town, down into the poison swamps that leads to Queelags domain. Though framerate issues can be a bother for this area which are also evident in Lost Izalith. Overall a lot of the areas can give you a lot to look at, some of them though feel short lived and you wish there was more.

Character and enemy designs are quite nice, there are many enemies and friendly NPC's to behold. Some bosses look ferocious and will make you jump out of your skin like the Gaping Dragon and Ceaseless Discharge, some will have a creepy feeling to them and look very dark and evil like the Four Kings and Nito. There are also some that more so give off a tranquil feeling and have a majestic feeling to them, such an example can come from looking at the Moonlight Butterfly. The DLC added some fun new things and bosses, as well as the corrupted Artorias the Abysswalker.

Conclusion

Dark Souls is indeed a difficult game, quite possibly one of the most difficult you may play especially when doing New Game+ and onwards. Though some of the areas were short and not as enjoyful as others, and even some of the bosses towards the end really fell off of the difficult peak. Though other great areas and groundbreaking difficult bosses make up for it. If you also don't know were to look for the story you may find it lacking out of the game and feel like theres really not much of a story. That is until you find out that minor dialogue exchanges between NPC's and items actually give you more then a hint about it, and the story becomes much more elaborate and engaging then what you originally thought of. The music will not leave you disappointed either providing you with many great soundtracks during the boss battles and it overall brings out the feel of the game quite well. Finally the games many interesting mechanics such as using souls for experience and money is very interesting and makes you really think about things, and the use of bonfires and upgrading and crafting your weapons are also a key factor in the game that bring out even more of its enjoyment. You can even join your friends in some jolly cooperation or battle them to the death adding more fun to the mix that everyone can enjoy together. Overall the game will challenge and give you a lot to experience, its not perfect and indeed has faults, but the game is well enough to get you to want to play more, so why not give it a shot, just be careful out there, we wouldn't want to see you go hollow.

Story:8.25

Graphics:8.5

Music:8.5

Final:8.5

Final Fantasy The 4 Heroes of Light

If you felt that the later Final Fantasies are straying too far from its roots, then this game is for you. It brings back many story and gameplay mechanics from the olden days of RPG's. The premise of the game is not unheard of for the franchise: four young heroes go out on an adventure to rescue the world from the evils that plague it.

Story:

You begin as the boy Brandt and it is his 14th birthday and you have just been summoned to appear before the King. He mentions how Princess Aire was kidnapped by the Wicked Witch of the North and he wants you to rescue her. You are then joined by your friend Jusqua to go save the princess. Then you meet up with the castle guard Yunita and together, the three of you save Princess Aire by defeating the witch, only to return to your hometown to discover it has turned to stone!

The four of you must search for a way to save the kingdom.

/spoiling the first hour of the game

If you're expecting an in-depth, or very story driven game, then look far away. This game harbors back to the NES and SNES days where the story is a bit "episodic". You visit a village, discover there's a problem, someone in the town tells you where to find the dungeon, slay the boss, save the village, and then be off to the next town. There's very little connecting the various mini-stories together outside of the main mission of figuring out how to save your hometown.

Characters:

While there is a cast of characters, and have a bit of personality, they're not really that interesting individually, and don't display much character growth. They're mostly just vessels to play through, and it's kind of struggling to remember a damn thing about any of them.

Brandt: He's the first character you play as, and is the typical adventurous hero character. He has a bright personality and is loyal to his friends, yadda yadda.

Jusqua: He's primarily the opposite of Brandt. The king sent Jusqua to check up on Brandt, but his job in the castle is never really explained. 

Yunita: she's a knight of Horne. She's Aire's bodyguard and is a great fighter, but she lacks confidence in difficult situations.

Aire: The youngest princess of Horne. She's the typical spoiled princess, and has little knowledge of the outside world. 

Gameplay:
The game largely follows a basic template for JRPG's, from the overworld, and random encounters, but it does add a bit of a twist for the battle system. While the battle system is largely a traditional turn based system, it has a system of action points. There are no magic points in this game, and any action uses these points. Everybody in your party has 5 action points, you never gain any more. Each action takes up one or more AP, and you regain a single point each time it is the character's turn. So if you use a move that takes up several AP, then you must plot out how to conduct your next moves, or risk getting in trouble. A faster way to regain your AP is to use the Boost option, as you can regain two points, but at the cost of not doing anything on your turn.

One aspect of the battle system that many would find a bit cumbersome, is that there is no targeting system. You are unable to target any of your opponents or your party members. This is a bit annoying at first, but if you have a party member low on HP, the cure spell will automatically target the member with the lowest HP, so luckily it won't just randomly select any character.

Next is the return of the popular job system (called crowns) from classic Final Fantasy games. With this there are a few familiar faces, like the white and black mages, monk, and paladin. There are a few that are fairly pointless, like the party host, and musician crowns... Some crowns are more helpful than others, especially when it comes to magic, as casting fire 1 as any other class takes two AP, but casting fire as a black mage now only costs 1 AP. So if you want to be a magic user, then it's highly advised to equip a mage crown.

Unlike Final Fantasy III, where you had to have a certain number of points to change jobs, this one allows you to change them on the fly with largely no penalties. This is quite helpful, as you spend the first half of the game with your party split up. So you don't have to relegate one character to be the healer, and one to be the magic user. Also unlike the other Final Fantasies, the jobs don't level up from battle like your character does, you level them up by filling their slots with the respectively shaped gems, and the max level for a job is level 3.

Speaking of gems, they are very valuable items, and you need them for basically EVERYTHING. At the beginning of the game they seem pointless. You grind your characters and you collect these gems, and they don't do anything, but you can sell them at the stores for money, as they're basically the only way to earn money, as you don't earn gil in battle like normal FF games.

As the game progresses, and you gain more crowns, you discover that you can use these gems to not only level up your crowns, you will also gain access to a shop that allows you to use gems to upgrade your weapons and armor. So now these gems are more valuable than ever. You now must figure out which is more important, buying new equipment, or leveling up your equipment. Luckily the game makes you change your equipment to something that is strong against the upcoming area boss, so you at least are forced to buy equipment instead. Only near the end of the game is leveling up your armor important.

One minor gameplay issue, is limited inventory space. In this day and age, it seems a bit silly that there isn't a party inventory, and your inventory is limited to a certain number of slots the characters hold, and that includes your equipment. This isn't too huge of an issue, and is only a problem when your party is relegated to a single person, but of all the modern conveniences, did they have to revert the inventory down? Luckily your key item inventory is separate from your characters' individual inventory, so at least that issue is taken care of.

Visuals:
The visuals are pretty fantastic for a DS game. Instead of using Final Fantasy III and IV's engine, they use a different engine, and a drastically different artstyle. It has a nice chibi storybook aspect of it, and gives you a nice nostalgic feeling of reading a children's storybook.

For a game on the DS, it does an okay job utilizing both screens. Most of the gameplay is on the touch screen, and you can use the stylus to control your character, but the D-Pad works just fine, and in battle, the menus are also on the touch screen. Outside of battle, the top screen really only shows your party's HP and AP, and is really only useful when you go to the world map, and the map is viewable on the top screen. It would have been nice to have a dungeon and town map on the top screen, but it's not a necessity, it does use both screens better than Final Fantasy III.

Music:

For the soundtrack, it's fantastic. It's like your typical old school RPG soundtrack except they mix between the bleeps and bloops of the NES days and with the modern midi sounds of the DS. The end result is a unique experience.

So if you're looking for a game that caters to your nostalgia needs, but with a new twist, Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light is the game for you. Just don't let its cute exterior fool you into thinking this is a stroll through the park

Music: 9/10.

Visuals: 9/10.

Story: 7/10.

Content 8/10.

Overall score: 8/10

Terranigma

Released in 1995 and published by Enix and developed by Quintet, Terranigma is an Action RPG that's very reminiscent of the Legend of Zelda series. Sadly it was never released in North America, but it was released in PAL regions, so there is an official English translation available. Quintet is known for other games like Soul Blazer and The Illusion of Gaia and shares similar gameplay with the two.

Story:

You play as the protagonist, the troublemaking Ark who lives in the village of Crysta, the only known village and nobody enters or leaves. There is a forbidden door that is closely guarded by the Village Elder, Ark finds the opportunity and opens the door and discovers a strange box. The box then casts a curse on the entire village freezing everybody but Ark and the Elder. The Elder informs Ark that to lift the curse, he must be the first to leave the and defeat the masters of the various towers strewn across the world. Defeating each tower breaks the seals on one of the various continents of the world (they're the same as our continents) and makes them reappear in the world.

Gameplay:

The game is your typical top-down SNES game like the other RPGs and The Legend of Zelda. Like the Legend of Zelda, the various dungeons and caves have various obstacles and puzzles that hinder your progression. Combat is also very similar to Zelda, but you have a few extra moves and you can perform magic. Like RPGs, killing the monsters give you experience and you can gain money.

The various dungeons strewn across the world either have tricky puzzles to figure out, or you go through a lengthy terrain and there are tricky obstacles and tough monsters to get through. Much of the game is difficult enough to make it not an easy stroll, but you can end up getting confused on what to do or where to go. While a walkthrough isn't required, it's very helpful.

Visuals:

Terranigma's graphics are pretty good for a SNES game. As it's a later release, the game takes advantage of what the SNES is capable of and the graphics are pretty comparable to Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. While some of the dungeons at the beginning of the game are pretty sameish, after the world is unlocked, a lot of the game's various regions are very well detailed.

Music:

As typical SNES RPGs from Enix and Square, the soundtrack is symphonic MIDI and there's some pretty good tracks on there. The initial gameplay feels a bit repetitive, but after the world opens up, the soundtrack also diversifies to give you a more diverse experience with the various regions you now have to explore

Crysta Theme

Overworld Theme

Verdict:

Terranigma is a great addition to anyone's collection who is fond of Zelda type games and looking into healthy alternatives. If you like challenging puzzles, fun boss fights, and a great story, then Terranigma is a great addition to anyone's SNES collection.

Music: 7/10.

Visuals (Or Graphics): 7/10.

Story: 8/10.

Content: 7/10.

Conclusion: 7/10

Star Ocean: First Departure

Released in 2007 in Japan and 2008 in Europe and North America, First Departure is the remake of the first game in Tri-Ace's Star Ocean series and is published by Square Enix. The original game was titled Star Ocean: Fantastic Space Odyssey, and was released in 1995 on the Super Famicom (SNES). It was developed by the group Wolf Team, and they previously released another RPG on the same console called Tales of Phantasia. After several creative disputes with their publisher Namco, after the released of Tales of Phantasia much of the development team left and started Tri-Ace and ran to another publisher, Enix. this is the reason why the Star Ocean series and the Tales series both share many similarities, and even the early games shared some of the same spells. They decided to stay way from some aspects of the typical high fantasy setting of many RPG games and focused on a heavily Star Trek influenced story and follows it up with science fiction elements.

The original version of Star Ocean was considered ahead of its time, and completely pushed the limits of the SNES. Sadly this game never saw the light of day outside of Japan, largely due to Enix closing it's North American market, and also due to it being a late SNES release, and Nintendo of America pushing the then new Nintendo 64. There is a fan translation available of this game.

In 2007 the game was finally remade for the Playstation Portable and released in the West. This version uses an updated version of the engine for Star Ocean: Second Story, and was developed alongside the enhanced port of that game, now called Star Ocean: Second Evolution. With this remake, they had help with the animation company Production IG, famous for Ghost in the Shell, and more recently Attack on Titan. There are many updates compared to the SNES version, as they added a few bonus characters, new soundtrack, and updated character designs and cutscenes. Despite all these changes, the story and gameplay is pretty unchanged.

Now for the actual review:

Story:

You play as a young warrior named Roddick Farrence who lives in the small town of Kratus. He runs a Defense Force team with his friends Dorne Murtough and Millie Chilette, and together they defend the village from robbers and thieves. They're young Fellpools who are a race of humanoid beings who have tails and pointy ears and live on the planet Roak.

After a day's work, they receive a letter that a nearby village has been plagued with a contagious disease causing everyone to turn to stone, and Dorne has the disease. They hear of an herb that is claimed to heal the stone sickness, and head off to Mount Metorx. Once they reach mount Metorx, they see a flash of light and two beings appear in front of them. They introduce themselves as Ronyx J Kenny and Illia Silvestri, and are part of a Galactic Federation, and are from the planet Earth. They have to bring the sad news that the herbs they seek won't cure the disease and bring the trio aboard their spaceship.

After Dorne is placed in medical care, the federation discovers that a rival group are supposedly creating a bio weapon by using the people on Roak. They realize that the only way to stop the disease is to find the host, but the host has been dead for 300 years. So Ronyx and Illia take Roddick and Millie to a planet that carries a time gate, and they travel 300 years to the past to find the demon Asmodeus to receive the cure for the disease. Thus the adventure begins.

Gameplay:

Largely a fairly traditional RPG with random encounters, the battle system is what sets the game apart from other RPG's. The battle system takes place in real time, and is similar to an action RPG where you can mash the action button to attack the enemy. You can assign special skills to the shoulder buttons What separates this from a real action RPG, the battles take place in another screen, and there are still menus to cast other spells, or use items. It's like a pseudo-action RPG with menus.

The rest of your party runs on AI and you can't really control them outside of setting tactics. So if you're tired of that character for always wasting their SP, you can set their tactic and tell them to save that shit up.

There's also a skill system where you can customize characters with various skills. While some of these help in battle, like increasing speed or recovery time, these skills are mostly for other aspects like item creation, via cooking meals, or creating items you can't find in stores.

There is also a feature called Private Actions, where when you enter a town, you can have the party explore the city on their own, and you can talk to them individually. This is an optional feature, and helps a bit with character development. This can also alter what happens in the various endings.

Visuals:

Since it uses the engine from Star Ocean: Second Story, with its 2D sprites on a pre-rendered backgrounds, the game looks like a game from the original Playstation. While not as graphically impressive as other PSP titles, it at least gets the job done like many other PSP ports of PS1 games. The game does feature a portrait of a main character's face in the dialog, and their face changes to depict their emotions.

Unlike the original version of the game, it does have a traditional overworld, and if you've played the original version, this gives the world a much larger feeling.

Music:

Like everything on this remake, the soundtrack was updated. It does sound a lot better than the SNES version, so while the original had a really good soundtrack, an updated version is much nicer. It does have a typical JRPG style soundtrack, but there are a few memorable tracks. The opening of the game even features the anime tradition of having a J-Pop theme song and it's a fairly likable track.

Verdict:

Star Ocean: First Departure is a pretty solid JRPG, and is a very recommendable title for those who are fond of the older RPG's from the SNES and PS1 days. The voice acting is decent, while not the best acting, and is patchy at times, it's definitely not something to cringe over. This game does show some of its age, so it may not appeal to those who want a more modern approach to their RPG's, but for those who either like RPG's in general, or want to play a lost classic, this is a very solid game to add to your collection.

Music: 7/10

Visuals: 7/10

Story: 8/10

Content: 8/10

Conclusion: 8/10

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4

Released in 2008 by Atlus on the PS2, the latest main entry into the subseries of the Shin Megami Tensei games known as Persona. Persona 4 takes the template set up by Persona 3 and adds a few tweaks to the system incorporated with an all new story and cast. Persona 4 also seems to break the cycle of the series being redesigned from the ground up as the predecessors have, which may have angered a few hardcore SMT fans, but the rest of the gaming world seems deeply satisfied.

Gameplay:

Like Persona 3, Persona 4 is a mix between life simulation and dungeon crawling, and the game progresses day by day. The days are separated into morning, afternoon, and night; each with different actions being available. The mornings largely consist of you being in class, the game usually fast forwards through this, but occasionally you'll get quizzed on random trivia and if you get it right, you'll increase certain stats. In the afternoon, you get either a choice between progressing into the TV world to complete the various dungeons, or to hang out with various students (or get a job) to increase your social link levels (more on this later). At night, there isn't much to do but study to increase your knowledge, read a book to increase other stats, or go to sleep to go to the next day. Occasionally there'll be mandatory story events at night.

For the dungeon crawling, you are tasked with reaching the top of the tower and defeating the boss by the specific deadline, or risk having a game over. Unlike Persona 3, the dungeon layouts aren't randomly generated, and you also have the ability to go down to lower floors if the enemies are getting too tough for you. Dungeon navigation is done in full 3D, and you get to see your character, and your party members following you around. The monsters (called shadows) are visible on screen, so there's none of the annoyance of random encounters. You are unable to tell what kind of shadows you'll fight, as they are displayed by a generic shadow sprite. You are also able to swing your sword at the shadows to initiate the battles, if you successfully swing it, you can have an initiative at the beginning of battle. If you fail, or just touch the shadow, you just have a regular battle. The shadows are also able to chase after you, so if they catch you, they get the initiative. Though if you are above a certain level in each dungeon, you are able to scare off the shadows.

The battle system is largely your traditional turn based battle system, but most of your abilities focus on you summoning various Personas. Personas are what the series calls the various monsters you summon into battle. Many of them are based on various mythological characters from various cultures around the world. Each Persona has their own stats, abilities, and weaknesses, and the hero is the only one with the ability to have multiple Personas while the rest of your party only has their own special Persona. To gain more Personas, you get an event after certain battles to collect the cards with Personas on them. They briefly flash you the cards and you have to get the card right, the penalty will risk you leaving empty handed, and possibly losing all the experience you got from the battle. For your party, you have a choice between having the rest of your party under tactics to let the AI do the thinking for you, or for full manual. Luckily the AI in this game is fairly smart, and you can go through the game with tactics with no problems.

The big deal with the Personas is fusion. While the ones you gain from battles have their abilities, they are fairly weak and only know one or two moves. Your task is to go to the Velvet Room and fuse Personas together to gain stronger Personas with more, and stronger, moves. You are also able to save Personas into a compendium to recall them later if you want them back, but they cost money.

Your character has two different sets of stats: one for battle, and one for social. The battle stats are your basic RPG stats, but the social stats can help you along with the social aspect of the game. Allowing you to be able to talk to certain people, or to initiate certain story events.

The beauty of Persona 4 is how the social aspects of the game, and the dungeon crawling aspects are fairly dependent on each other. The social links are corresponded with a certain tarot card arcana, one social link for one arcana. The various Personas are also categorized by tarot card arcana. If you hang out with the social link people enough, the corresponding link will level up, this in turn gives your Persona an experience boost when you fuse to make them even stronger, and saves you grinding time. Each of your party members also have social links, so if you max out a party member's social link, their Persona evolves into a stronger one.

With the social links, you basically hang out with a person and help them through their dilemma. You get to watch various people work through their life problems, and you get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when you help them out. The girls' social links have a slightly different ending, if you max out a girl's social link, they will ask you out and you can start dating. The problem with this is if you have a bunch of girls around a certain social link level, they'll start to get jealous and leave you with a broken social link that you must then mend! If you do time everything right, you are able to have multiple girlfriends in the game, and end up dating all of the girls in your party (and then some) what a stud!

Story:

The protagonist has no default name, but if you watched the anime, or played Persona 4 Arena, he is known as Yu Narukami, and for the sake of this review, we shall also associate him as such.

You play as Yu Narukami as he has to spend a year of high school at a new school in the small town of Inaba. Your parents are going to be working for the entire year overseas and you must live with your uncle Dojima and your elementary school cousin, Nanako. As you enter the school, you soon befriend 3 students: the goofy Yosuke, tomboy Chie, and the elegant Yukiko, who are all friends.

Chie tells you of a rumor flying around school about something known as the Midnight Channel, where if you watch TV at midnight when it's raining, you'll see your destined lover on there. As the game goes on, you discover that the people on the channel show up missing, and appear dead a few days later, and you and your friends begin to notice something suspicious, as clearly you can't have a Shin Megami Tensei game without murder victims. You then discover that there's a hidden world inside the TV and there's a strange bear known as Teddie who tells you about a stranger throwing people inside and you find out that those people were the kidnapped victims.

Most of the game cycles around you seeing a person on the Midnight Channel, and jumping into the channel to prevent them from dying. All while trying to figure out who the culprit behind the murders and kidnapping. They also tend to mix in stories revolving around your high school experience which tends to follow some typical tropes from anime school shows like: summer vacation, school camping trip, school festival, swimsuit scene, etc. While the story may have a dark demeanor in it, there's also a mix of comedy into it to lighten the mood. While the game can feel a bit repetitive after awhile, the story events can be quite enjoyable and give very nice breaks away from the grinding. While there are plot twists in the story, you won't have to worry about M Night Shyamalan style twists like a few Final Fantasy games, and the story is a bit straightforward.

The game is largely voice acted, with only the social links not being voiced. There is only the English voice cast, so if you're a Japanese voice purist, then you will be disappointed. Though if you're okay with English voices, the voice cast is very well done and has some big names like Johnny Yong Bosche of Bleach and Code Geass fame and Ali Hillis from Final Fantasy XIII and Mass Effect.

Characters:

 These are the initial cast of characters, there are several more important characters that appear throughout the game, but for the sake of keeping this review shorter, and preventing spoilers, we'll stick to these guys.

Yu Narukami:

 The protagonist of the game, he's the typical silent protagonist in many RPG's and has no default name. You get to play as the new kid in town, and cope with your life at a new school. He's also the only character with the ability to summon multiple personas. His default Persona is Izanagi who carries a giant sword, and boasts electricity powers.

Yosuke Hanamura:

Yosuke is one of your first friends, and previously the new kid, as he moved to Inaba six months before you did. His father runs the local Junes department store, and he works there part time. He's the typical comic relief character that people like to hate on as he's kind of annoying. He has a brash personality, and acts before he thinks, usually getting him in trouble with Chie. To get around the fact that you don't have a default name, Yosuke calls you bro, which has caused fans to dub him as Brosuke. Yosuke's Persona is Jiraiya who has wind abilities.

Chie Satonaka:

Chie is the tomboy of the group, and can have a short temper, especially when it comes to Yosuke being well... Yosuke. She's been best friends with Yukiko since they were little, and is always there to protect her. Despite having a short temper with Yosuke, she's pretty friendly and outgoing, which is why she's the first to make friends with you. She's a big fan of kung fu movies, which shows in her fighting style, as she's the kicker. Despite the fact that she fights in her school uniform during much of the game, she wears modesty shorts under her skirt, so you won't get any sneak peaks at her panties, sorry guys. Her Persona is Tomoe who carries a big spear and is a big physical attacker, and also has a few ice moves up her sleeve.

Yukiko Amagi:

Chie's best friend, Yukiko is initially a shy and introverted girl. Her family is rich as the owners of the renowned Amagi Inn. Apparently every guy in the school has the hots for her, and always try asking her out, which causes Chie to scare the guys off, as Yukiko is too shy to talk to them. Despite having the best grades in class, a running gag is where she gets into laughing fits at really bad jokes, which makes Chie wonder about her sometimes. Her persona is Konohana Sakuya and specializes in healing and fire abilities, a very important person to have in your party.

Teddie:

Teddie is a mysterious bearlike creature who lives in the TV world. He helps you out in the game by giving you tips in battle. He has a penchant for having bear related puns, despite nobody, except Yukiko, finds them enjoyable.

Ryotaro Dojima:

Dojima is your uncle who offered to take you in while your parents are abroad. Dojima is a single parent and works as a detective. He has a very authoritative personality. Since he'll be stuck at work a lot, he's not at home most of the time, much to the dismay of his daughter Nanako.

Nanako Dojima:

Nanako is Dojima's daughter/your cousin. Due to her father being gone all the time because of his job, she's a lot more mature than other kids her age, as she manages to do things at home by herself, like fixing meals for the family. Initially shy towards you, she eventually opens up and shows a lot of affection towards you, like calling you big bro.

Visuals:

The art style is largely anime based, and Atlus also doesn't disappoint with the graphics which are quite good for a late PS2 title. Everything is rendered in 3D polygons, and the characters are full sized (none of that super deformed nonsense) and very closely resemble the anime graphic they show when they're talking. Even the anime graphic has different facial expressions when they're talking, to add to their feelings.While you are only able to rotate the camera while you're in a dungeon, or at school, you still feel like you're running around in a small town despite the limited exploration you can do. Occasionally there are full anime cutscenes, but they are fairly rare.

Music:

The game comes with a CD of the soundtrack, luckily it's a fantastic soundtrack. Persona 4 follows the steps of Persona 3 by having a more J-pop influenced soundtrack with vocals sung in English. Luckily, unlike 3, the Japanese vocalist has a much better English accent and you can understand what she is saying, whereas with Persona 3's vocalist, you'd think she's singing in Japanese until you look at the lyrics and it's supposed to be in English.

While some of the songs have a J-pop twist, it's not that fluffy and cute stuff that some people associate J-pop with, and there's several instrumental tracks to keep with the mood of the game when it starts to get dark.

Verdict:

As typical of a Shin Megami Tensei game, this is quite a monstrous game and will be quite lengthy. Luckily there's plenty to do in the game to break from the mundainty, and you will be kept on your toes over who the killer is. With its colorful cast and great story, Persona 4 is perfect for those who want to dedicate time to a lengthy RPG that doesn't crush under its own weight.

Music: 9/10.

Visuals (Or Graphics): 9/10.

Story: 9/10.

Content: 9/10.

Conclusion: 9/10