Posts Tagged ‘JRPG’
Atlus Announces Crimson Gem Saga
Game publisher Atlus is continuing their streak of bringing games to the USA; their newest title is Crimson Gem Saga, which they’ve secured the publishing rights to release on the PSP. The title is a JRPG which promises a thrilling story and turn based combat that is simple enough for newcomers to master and complex enough to keep the attention of more experienced gamers including combo chains, ambush attacks and multi-character attacks.
For once North American gamers are getting something over the Japanese version: in addition to an excellent soundtrack Atlus has added over a thousand extra lines of voice acting to the original. The game revolves around Killian von Rohcoff, a hero who hits a run of bad luck. After being robbed of the top spot in his graduating class he follows a lead on a job which gets his wallet stolen and propels him into the main storyline which revolves around an ancient artifact known as the ‘Wicked Stone’ (which my keen intuition tells me might be some shade of red).
Tales of Vesperia Review–It’s All About Style Over Substance
Tales of Vesperia is one of those Xbox 360 games that are really rather difficult to put in a corner.
Part of the rather extensive Tales Of series that includes such pieces as Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Legends, Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Eternia, Tales of of Vesperia seems to be a lot like Bandai / Namco’s shot at the Final Fantasy series with a series of generally unrelated stories with only a few connecting threads among them. In fact, you’ll even be using a battle system developed for Tales of the Abyss that was revamped and refined specifically for Tales of Vesperia.
And this time around, you’re hanging out on planet Terca Lumireis, a planet where a kind of magic seems to have taken the place of technology for the most part, so that you’re looking at a planet with feudal-age technology that still has giant fountains. Mages replace scientists here, and are counted on to keep the system running. Made up words abound–the magic technology keeping the planet running is called “blastia”, “blastia” is made up by a kind of subetheric substance called “aer”, and there’s several different kinds of “blastia” keeping the planet running like aque which handles water, and bodhi, which is used by soldiers to enhance their combat skills. Anyway, the whole game starts when the poor side of the capital city’s aque blastia is stolen, causing its fountain to run amok and start flooding the whole area. Naturally, no one else seems to care, because it’s not THEM about to die in a flood. A former Imperial Knight, Yuri, goes off in search of the mage hired to keep the water running in the first place and breaks into his house, winding up in prison. From there, Yuri discovers that there’s a conspiracy going around in the highest echelons of government focused around a young woman with impressive healing capabilities that can be channeled into summoning a beast with the ultimate power to destroy all life as we know it. So it’s really only a matter of time before someone tries to either kill the young woman or harness her power, so Yuri’s got to try and keep the girl alive, and save the world.
I know, kind of a convoluted plotline. But that’s okay, as this is very clearly a Japanese RPG. You can tell from the aforementioned nonsensical storyline and the opening that’s a very pure anime. Also you can tell from some of the voice actors–both Wendee Lee and Dee Bradley Baker are involved in this one. You probably recognize Wendee as Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop, and there’s a whole laundry list of places to recognize Dee Bradley Baker from. The Japanese have a downright gift for making the purest nonsense entertaining and even fun, so you won’t CARE that it doesn’t make any sort of sense because you’ll be too busy enjoying it.
But don’t expect to have a lot of fun right away with Tales of Vesperia–it’s another one of those games where you’ll spend a lot more time watching the game than playing it, especially in the first half-hour or so. Thankfully, the cut scenes and anime bookending is just plain old beautiful to watch, so you may be able to live with the fact that you’re not so much a character as a passenger for a good long while. Action buffs, however, will be spectacularly irked by the focus of QQ over pew-pew if you get my drift.
This is not to say that Tales of Vesperia is a particularly BAD game, it’s really more of a NICHE game. If you’re looking for a movie that takes a couple dozen hours to play through and offers some interactivity, you could do a whole lot worse than Tales of Vesperia.
Blue Dragon Video Game – Fun For The Old-School RPG Fan
I’m really very fond of RPGs–I love how deep a storyline can get with those, and how easily you can be pulled along. I love that role playing games often require a company to put out its very best in graphics technology, and also its best in sound design. Indeed, a role playing game must often be the most polished title a company can release, packing innovation and clever game modes and variety like no tomorrow into one handy package on the Xbox 360.
This is why I enjoyed Blue Dragon, a game that took the best parts of Japanese animation and coupled them to a role playing game that made for hours of fun.
It’s a massive story, requiring several DVDs, and involves a boy named Shu and several of his friends given the power to control their shadows as weapons. They can alter their shadows according to several different kinds of “Shadow Change”, to focus on attack, stealth or defense, among others. From there, Shu and company must set out to save the land conquered by evil aliens. And when I say evil, I mean evil, as in that kind of gleeful evil that’s downright sociopathic. Think Kefka with godlike powers and you’ll get the basic idea behind the evil that’s infesting Shu’s world, and why it so desperately needs to be stomped out.
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Get The Soundtrack Of A Non-existent JRPG
Many genres and series get criticized for their predictability and lack of innovation; shooters, sports games, fighting games, you name it. Ever since Final Fantasy VII the JRPG genre has been somewhat cliche itself. Ever since then they’ve been filled with spiky-haired youths wielding impossibly oversized swords fighting against evil empires.
The soundtracks are often equally predictable/interchangeable. An enterprising individual has created his own soundtrack for a JRPG known as Ebben Flow, a fantasy adventure where rising water levels have submerged most of the world. The kicker is that this game doesn’t exist, but Kotaku reader Michael Chadwick created a fifteen-track soundtrack which you can download.