Atlus began the Shin Megami Tensei games with the Super Famicom back in 1992. In the first game, Japan was slowly being overrun by demons, while the balance of law and chaos was tipping. Devil Survivor for the Nintendo DS has a similar setting; the Hero and his high school friends find themselves stuck in a lockdown of the entire Tokyo. Unable to return home, they use their homebrewed DS' -- COMPs -- that allow them to summon demons at will to fight in order to survive.
What Devil Survivor does incredibly well is believability. The citizens of Tokyo act realistically to the invasion of demons. The desperation of no travel to the outside world creates riots and depression among common folk. Throughout the course of the game, you'll come across options for how to solve the situation. Your primary objective to get out of the lockdown eventually becomes the least. This game has up to six endings for the campaign. There is a New Game+ if you want to watch the other endings with your skills intact.
Devil Survivor is a tactical role-playing game that merges the turn-based system and the grid system together. Much like in ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat, you'll be positioning your characters on the grid to prepare for the turn-based confrontations. You have your standard melee and magic system, as well as elemental immunities and vulnerabilities. The character with the most speed goes first. Each character on the grid is a three man party; however, you can only have one human and two demons for each of them. While you're on the grid, you can check for all information on your enemies freely, as well as switch demons for other ones. There are many skills you can learn for use on the grid - you can't attack, but you can cure, restrict enemy movement, and fortify your party.
When a character attacks another on the grid, it brings up the turn-based battle system. Depending on who started the attack, they gain inititive which helps you in the battle. While in the turn-based mode, if you use magic that is effective, or score a critical attack, you receive an extra move. You also get extra moves from having a high agility stat, but you can only have one extra move per turn. You can also ban certain elements from the battle. Before the battle starts, you choose the placement of your party (you don't get much choice though). In order to obtain skills for the humans you have to crack them from the enemies you kill. The strategy in cracking is that the character you choose to crack the skill with has to be the one to defeat the enemy. Anyway, to defeat what looks like a single enemy on the grid, you only have to take out the leader of the group, i.e. the guy in the centre. This makes battles not take as long as you would expect, since the majority of the time you'll be able to defeat the leader in one turn. However, doing so will only give you the experience of that enemy alone, so you may find yourself in trouble later on in the game.
Outside of battles you can purchase demons using Macca earnt with the auction house. The Cathedral of Shadows allows you to fuse demons with other demons you get from the auction house. Fusing demons happens regularly in the game, and it allows you to really create the team you want. Fusing two together will allow you to create a whole new demon, carrying over bonuses and skills. It's more useful than buying another demon whenever it comes available in the auction house. The game lets you see what demons you can create and their skills, so there is no need to experiment with fusing to see what you can get.
Devil Survivor's art, music, and plot all fit together nicely. The layout of the game seems very similar to The World Ends With You. You'll find yourself favouring characters and really choosing the ending you want. Apart from the story, another standout part of the game is the boss battles. Each of them has their own unique BS abilities; each of them took me on average more than four tries to defeat. You CAN just look at their weaknesses and such and plan your party out accordingly; the only real way to mix and match your party up is by getting new demons. The boss battles need to be planned out, where my party was made to take out baddies as quickly as possible. You can really make the game difficult (not impossible) by making the main character level up in a silly way. With each level up you can assign a point to either: Agility (which also increases the chance of Extra Move); Vitality (increases you're HP); Magic; and Strength. If you think you can just assign strength throughout the game, you'll wish you hadn't when you find out all the useful skills require the other attributes, especially the one that stops one of the bosses from reflecting your attacks back to you.
If you're unlucky enough to do so, you can exploit the suspend feature. If you've played handheld RPGs before you'll likely know about Suspend Data; this is when you save during a battle or whatever and the game turns your machine off. This is very convenient for those playing RPGs on handheld, but the great thing about Devil Survivor is that it doesn't turn your machine off. Meaning you can save anywhere in a battle right before you make a mistake and have a retry, over and over again. A scenario where this was very useful was when one of the bosses would either annihilate me or I'm lucky enough to get a few critical hits in succession.
What I liked most in Devil Survivor was its presentation: you pretty much select where in Tokyo you want to go and you either read a conversation of the in game characters to progress though the day. There is pretty much no exploration with the city, but the story is very engaging so hopefully you'll stay interested. You don't really battle demons for no reason in the story, only for the free battles which you don't really have to touch until you're in trouble. Unlike other turn-based strategy games, battles don't ever take more than thirty minutes long, allowing you to concentrate on only the bosses and story.
Devil Survivor will take you through a grand story with its down-to-earth presentation. It is a great tactical role-playing game. If you're looking to be part of your game's story and really take control of the conclusion, Devil Survivor will make your purchase feel worthwhile. As for technical issues, there are small amount of grammar mistakes and a couple of untranslated text (which just say things like character X walked away). There has been a single time my game froze during a battle, and from other's impressions, the game freezing is very rare.
I'm sure you have figured it out by now, I'm a fan of action-JRPGs, and Infinite Undiscovery teaches me a lesson to not be hyped for every single one that comes out. No action-JRPG will have two hundred different endings depending on your choices... this sad fact that I have learnt as I looked silently at Infinite Undiscovery's second disk.
Let's face it... Undiscovery is not a real word and it makes even less sense when it is read with Infinite in front of it. Perhaps it is a bad translation of ‘Finite Discoveries' who knows, as that would make more sense as a title for this game. Capell is the name of the protagonist- he isn't your average badass anime hero, he just looks like one. He looks like the supporting protagonist... that is, ‘exactly' like Sigmund (your average badass anime hero), who liberates the world these huge chains that bind the world to the moon with his huge party on non-cliché characters. Capell is a flute player who tries to explain at the first point of that game he can't fight to save his life and how he cannot be the badass hero he was mistaken for when he got captured. Aya (the typical beautiful anime supporting-hero) mistakes him for Sigmund, rescues him from captivity, and then suddenly Capell can take out a few guards single-handedly.
JRPGs nowadays don't even bother trying to have a good introduction- probably because they all know that they cannot top Final Fantasy VIII 's overdramatic opening of two teenage students performing a turn-based battle system with music that has indescribably strange lyrics. Infinite Undiscovery finds itself unfinished, undeveloped and un...undiscovered. A small fraction of cut-scenes are not voiced, the game is lacking in side-quests, and so many areas seem unpopulated due to the fact that no non-playable character will speak outside of a cut-scene. The voice-acting is something you can get used to but the lip-syncing looks as if they just threw in English-Language tracks all over the place- this game should've had Japanese audio, all those other Xbox 360 JRPGs do! (The Dreadknight makes me laugh every time). That is excused anyway... because the light humor that this game contains will make you be in a state of gaiety at every other cut-scene- if it doesn't then you have no heart. Every single little story element I can tell you will be a spoiler, so just get the idea that it isn't a cliché action-JRPG story, and that there is a lovable character for everyone. If you are looking for a serious story then this probably isn't your type- it is short and undelivering yet somehow humorous and lovable thanks to the battle sequences.
Notation: is every emotional scene supposed to be funny?
Environments in games have never been so realistically colourful- a perfect blend of detailed textures and thick geometry makes the surrounding areas something worth to look at while you craft items for the better hour (not sure you will, but I know I spent a whole sitting crafting... I'll get into that more later on). Infinite Undiscovery allows you to have full control over the camera; you can zoom into your characters thus creating the perfect composition at any time. Character models look lively and enemies look as if they had the same amount of time put into their designs, which is something most action-JRPGs forget to do. At any (most) given time in Infinite Undiscovery, you can look above you to see the chained moon, miles and miles away from your view- beautiful thing to see. The inside areas are less interesting; the cities in the game will seem amazing at first, but you'll soon realise that you can only explore a small amount of each one. The game teases you by letting you see where you cannot go.
If you know action-JRPGs well, you will know that these games always end up having brilliant displays of action not far in- Infinite Undiscovery does just that. Battles are not as flashy as Star Ocean 's. It takes a few from Final Fantasy XII 's open-world-no-transitions system, accept this time all of your commands are in real time. You can take your time to explo- sorry, ‘discover' the wide lands while seamlessly gaining experience points and learning new combos from the respawning enemies, which is more than needed because this gem has satisfactory difficulty.
Motoi Sakuraba demonstrates once again that he can make every game he works on have a similar style because of the beautifully composed music. Infinite Undiscovery has a very distinctive theme, and depending on your personal style you may end up paying extra just to hear the tunes whilst on the train. Sounds are in full 5.1 as they should be- however there is no option to hear everything in stereo... the game actually forces a surround soundtrack, which means that if you don't have a cinema sound system you won't hear what you can see at times. The music sounds just a tad bit more beautiful than most of the other action-JRPGs Sakuraba has worked on, and every flute song you acquire for Capell can be played over any music track to add a flavour of awesome to it.
With a total of eighteen characters to play with during the course of the game there is a lot to explo- sorry, discover, during a single play-through in terms of levelling up. Even though you have such a huge cast to consider- the good thing is that they always gain experience whether they are in your party or not, organizing every character is too much of a chore and it is ridiculous how little help the game gives you though. Because of this huge cast the game allows you have up to eleven allies to fight beside you- think about how action packed and confusing that will get... quite!- as well as slowing down the game a lot, you will get confused as to what is actually happening. The ability to parry almost pointless to have since the framerate makes it so that you cannot even see what the enemy is doing. The AI for your party members is like the developers preset their ‘gambits ' or something... they heal when needed, run when needed, and attack in the best possible format; a very nice thing, even though you have no idea what is going on in a battle, at least your friendly AI does!
Combos deal a big part in this game- there are three different types and they all serve their purposes. Down combos replenish your magic-points (MP), ground is for obtaining action(?)-points (AP), and finally aerial for extra experience-points (EXP). For the aerial combos you'll need to have more AP than the monster's weight before a launch attack will send it flying. Once in the air you'll have to keep chaining attacks. You can set your party members to concentrate on helping you combo an enemy or tell them specifically what to do- problem is, it is overly complicated to get around doing just that. Luckily you can just let your allies do whatever they do best and you'll more-so get a decent combo the majority of the time. You can earn yourself bonus experience-points and rarer spoils by sneaking up on an enemy or by telling an ally to send a huge fireball at one from afar- if you successfully surprise an enemy you gain a small amount of time to defeat it in order to get those bonuses. If an enemy surprises you you'll be vulnerable to critical damage under the same circumstances.
Savepoints are far apart from each other so taking a break from the game isn't something you can do at all times, you can of course pause the game- but that isn't an excuse for making savepoints thirty minutes apart. The savepoints don't recover you like they do in modern JRPGs- and for god's sake, why can't every single one of these understand that you should be replenished every time you level up? Cures are regularly forgotten and the game doesn't allow you to choose a healing spell during a fight, you have to trust your partners to do everything for you. You can not control any character besides Capell, so if magic floats your boat you will be disappointed- though I suppose the sword play is fine enough, well, it had better been since it is the only thing you can use to fight with. That being said, as I mentioned the friendly AI is really intelligent so you will see a mass use of magic from spell users. Because of my lack of preserving items there have been many times where I had to wait a minute when I was dead as my fellow allies just ran about like idiots because they had no curing items left- no option to skip this, apart from going back to the dashboard... also there is no checkpoint system, meaning every time you die at an unexpected boss fight you must go all the way back to that savepoint in god-knows-where.
At last I can talk about my favorite installment: On your task to save the world from gigantic chains you pick up spoils from enemies or plants to craft yourself extremely useful stuff in real-time, or use items for enchantments for such powers-ups like Anti-untasting or Anti-unhearing... I know... I don't understand either. To access the crafting menu anytime you sit your characters down in the middle of a field. The crafting menu is too complicated and all-over-the-place for you to concentrate on every combination possible- it does take a while for a single item to be crafted but you can make each party member craft something different at the same time; allowing you to improve your skills and buff your characters up in an interesting format. Most items you create are used as components in other pieces of equipment and every character uses different components to craft different things; to top it off, while you are crafting, you get to hear your party members complain about each other or comment on task at hand while any enemy in the area can still see and attack you (dare I mention real-time again?).
To sum it all up- Infinite Undiscovery is to Star Ocean as how Final Fantasy XII is to Final Fantasy . It is a gem for action-JRPG lovers- it plays like a remake to one of your favorite games that you have forgotten how the story folds out. I found myself turning the game on just to sit my characters down in the real-time menu whilst I work on something away from the Xbox 360... this of course racked up my timer quite a bit, but it shows that Infinite Undiscovery is totally lively. Unless you are saving your money for tri-Ace's Star Ocean IV pick this game up and try out, please don't rent it, only do so if you absolutely have to, because the replay value is at its peak in this game.
Why do JRPGs nowadays feel the right to rip off Palom and Porom? Rico and Rucha are just like these cute (and scary) characters.
In 2007 The Behemoth had remade a critically acclaimed game Alien Hominid , slapped the letters HD on it and released it for the ever-so-popular Xbox LIVE Arcade.
This digitally downloadable (remake) title hit an impressive amount of sales and rolled the idea of ‘kindness/money-making' in the team's eyes. Their ‘other' critically acclaimed game Castle Crashers made its way onto the same arcade- no longer was the only The Behemoth game at the arcade a pseudo-Metal Slug. Castle Crashers, while not in a similar genre as Alien Hominid , still featured the light-heavy humour all The Behemoth games have.
A beat ‘em up action-RPG featuring 4-player co-op over Xbox LIVE and local allows you to play as four colourful knights (or twenty unlockable characters) as you battle your way through the elemental lands to rescue four princesses. The ‘beat ‘em up' part of Castle Crashers is a less exhilarating Guardian Heroes combat system which only has two different attack buttons and a handful of combos. Depending on how you spend your skill points you get after you level up determines whether you can use the unique magic abilities your knight was always supposed to use. When you start you begin with character level one- if you don't like Castle Crashers during this moment you never will, however, that doesn't mean that the game stays the same in terms of combat. The ‘action-RPG' consists of allowing you to venture any of the many levels packed in this game at any time you choose, and of course the levelling up system which, by the way, you can make your character have a though time fighting solo if you don't plan out your skill points.
Castle Crashers is a game where it was designed for it to played multiplayer, that doesn't mean that solo is worthless however... your characters are client-sided, meaning whether you play offline or online your character will always have the same amount of gold and unlockables, think Phantasy Star Online .
If you have a completionist mentality then this game does offer you more playtime than regular RPGs do; note however, that this only holds true if you want to max out every unlockable character and find all the pets... and by pets I mean little furry companions that give you bonuses as you fight or fight along side you. In terms of longevity and replay value you should be afraid of how much there is- which is totally fine.
If you have completed the campaign and you don't feel you should go through the same levels with your all-so-powerful level 20+ character the game has a mode called ‘Insane Mode' which, I will say is made for more than a single player. The mode is created for reaching the level cap as well as unlocking more powerful items which are otherwise pointless unless you plan on boosting another character.
Spoils in the game only consist of health up items and gold, with a rare possibility of picking the enemies weapon. Since experience points are only offered to you by how much you attack an enemy and not when you kill it, going to harder levels to become powerful is either foolish or just for the challenge.
All in all, the game is worth the (get ready) 1200 Microsoft Points (ouch!) it asks you for. If it sounds too much for you, there is a trial version- which, again, if it doesn't convince you at first it never will. However, before you consider buying it only for the Xbox LIVE co-operative you may want to wait it out until a patch is released to fix the Net Code. Castle Crashers certainly delivers- as long as you don't suspect it being as combat heavy as Guardian Heroes was.
This is an Action Role-Playing Game that has been ported from the PC with a few extras. The Gameplay is very simple. With only a few button commands and a familiar 'feel' it allows the player to command the famous red-haired adventurer Adol Christin, aka, Adol the Red to his full potential. Inflicted with temporal amnesia and unconscious on shore, Adol gets treated by a couple of Rhedan, people with tails. From there he receives his mission to explore and learn about the ways of the Canaan Islands. The game begins- no hour long introductions.
The story in this game is engaging, but it doesn't require the player pay attention to it. Ys VI tells you the story through classic dialogue, along with detailed portrait of the speakers, showing which expression they should have.
This scene is long. Reeaaaalllly long
Don’t expect a really shocking plot, otherwise it won’t be shocking! The Canaan Island isn't exactly 'large', but it has its share of fantasy culture and fauna. However if the player doesn't listen to what people have to say he/she will get lost, that's the thing about this game, one will tend to get lost a whole lot. Whilst not as bad as The Legend of Zelda in terms of directions, this game wants the player to explore every corner of each road, and if Adol stumbles across an area he should not be present in yet, the enemies in the game will be extremely higher levelled and slaughter the poor swordsman in a single strike. The game has a tendency to punish the player if he/she doesn't listen to what the non-playable-characters have to say. Though, sometimes if Adol doesn't attack the habitants of the Island along his way, even the right dungeon to be will destroy him.
One of the three magic attacks- I liked this one the most
Which is why in this game, Adol can be only a couple of level-ups from doing zero-damage to killing an enemy in a single hit. As an action Role-Playing Game this means the game has sacrificed quite a bit of customization and character development so the gamer can play the game as if it's not a Role-Playing Game at all. Grinding is hardly noticed in this game, and it’s even more bril’ because of that.
"Sometimes nullifies attacks." more like always...
The action in the genre title is definitely in here, this is what the game focuses on and does well at. Meaning- the whole game, albeit the buying items and cut-scenes, has been worked on brilliantly and offers you the experience you would expect from a good combat-based game. With a choice of only three weapons it does extremely well to include deep combat moments. The swords, all of which you need to play the game for a considerable amount of time for, have only one slightly different attack- its magic. But the depth in the combat-system comes from the different kinds of enemies; expect twice as many different ways to an enemy with the same attack than Capcom's combat-heavy Devil May Cry 4. This sounds like an exaggeration, but it isn't, this game's combat is deep. Of course, this game features bosses, and sadly the bosses aren't that hard n Normal. They have thought put in them, but several different boss attack and methods no longer surprise the veteran gamer.
SPOILER - Boss fight is easy , not on Nightmare- it's impossible
Even though this game is short, it offers a range of difficulty levels, and when you complete Normal and move onto Nightmare- you'll be playing the game very differently. The trade-off for the easy Normal mode is that you'll dumb yourself down as a gamer so the game doesn't have to try hard to give you challenge- but that depends on the gamer. Included in the portable port is a few useless extras, without them, the game would be lacking.
Graphics are not even average for the Sony gaming machine, but that is to be excused, it's a port from a Japanese game from 2003. The graphics have been immensely toned down for the portable handheld sadly, and the greatest effect the game has been removed thanks to the rating-system. This game no longer features red-juicy-soundly-and-lovely-blood. Nor does it feature voice-acting, the voice-acting that was implemented in the console version- the same voice-acting that made ears bleed, a good thing indeed. Be thankful the PlayStation Portable has limited graphical potential, otherwise I fear Konami would have tried to add the poor 3-Dimentional models from the ps2 version in this faithful-to-the-original port.
It's beautiful when the screen is moving.
While this may have not been popular with the majority of the PlayStation Portable owners, it's a solid and classic Action Role-Playing Game, for just about anyone who understands the game has level-ups.
Ninja Gaiden Σ 2 Demo is ready for downloading on the Japanese PSN Store. The game is an expansion to Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox 360. The demo allows you play as the returning Ryu Hayabusa, as well as for the first time, Ayane. The full game will allow you to play as Rachel, as well as Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword's Momiji.
The demo let's you choose the difficulty level for Ryu Hayabusa. You can use the Kusari-gama, Dragon Sword, Falcon's Talons, and a new weapon in the demo. Ryu's level is shorter than it was in the demo for the Xbox 360, but there is an additional cut-scene and a new boss to see. The game isn't smooth, it slows down quite a bit, more than the Xbox 360 version -- and loading times are longer than Ninja Gaiden 2's despite the fact that the demo was installed to the hard drive.
The controls felt awkward at first; however, Ryu can now have a projectile weapon and the shuriken equipped at the same time. Pretty useless for me, but it saves time. The 'camera reset' button can now be held to sense the direction of where to proceed. Enemies seem to live longer, and the Falcon's Talons don't cut off limbs as much as they used to. There is a new weapon called Emma's Fang, which is a remake of a Ninja Gaiden weapon; it doesn't seem to cut the limbs off the Black Spider Clan ninja very much at all. You can now side-step when zooming in with the bow, but you can't charge up the arrows in the demo; whether or not you can't in the full game, I have no idea. Life of the Gods and Lives of the Thousand Gods gets used as soon as you pick them up, making it now impossible to save them as healing items.
When loading, there is no discription for the levels as there was before, which makes the loading screen less interesting than the Xbox 360's version. Essense (orbs that appear from dead bodies) look very different; and the blue essense (healing orb) seems to be more frequent. The HDR (over-brights/lighting) looks much better, and the water appears to look nicer at first, but if you look closely, you'll see that the water only reflects the HDR. Gore has been extremely reduced, and limbs do not stay on the ground anymore.
The diffculties The Path of the Mentor and The Path of the Master Ninja don't start with Incendary Shuriken ninja. When those ninja do appear, only two of them fight at a time so they don't spam incendary shurikens at you (the hardest part of Ninja Gaiden 2). Those ninja also don't throw the incendary shurikens at requent as before, but they have a lot more health than they used to. The game seems easier, I don't get hit as much as I do Ninja Gaiden 2. The most difficult part of Ninja Gaiden Σ 2 Demo is the incendary arrow enemies after the new cut-scene with the big Buddha. The Buddha acts like the Bone Skeleton boss from the first game, and when you fight it before you normally get the Lunar Staff, the demo ends. Beating the Buddha unlocks harder difficulties, and Ayane. Beating it on Path of the Master Ninja does not give you any extra content.
Ayane can only be played in a night time version of the New York stage. She seems to have only one weapon in the game (which feels like the Tonfa mixed with the Falcon's Talons), and I guess she only has a single projectile weapon and ninpo. The ninpo is the one you see her use in the Dead or Alive series, it is very powerful and has quite a large blast radius. Her projectile weapon is pretty much an infinite supply of incendary shurikens. After completing her demo area, you unlock Team Missions.
Oh yeah -- you can move Ayane's boobs by shaking the controller...
Playing the Team Missions offline will give you a Friendly AI to help you out. You can pick between two survival levels and one boss level. Using Ninpo in a team mission at the same time with someone else makes you both use a combines ninpo that has a very large blast radius -- either that, or it wipes out the entire screen; this is called Ultimate Ninpo. The Friendly AI got himself murdered so I couldn't finish the team mission with the boss. I remember there being a way to revive teammates but I didn't try. Also, both players can pick the same character with the same costume. However, you can't change weapons once the team mission starts (you have to select it beforehand) because you cannot pause.
Now for some personal input: I was waiting the try the demo for quite some time now, as I still play Ninja Gaiden 2 frequently. After doing everything possible in the demo (which took about an hour) I don't feel as if the game makes Ninja Gaiden 2 obsolete. The gameplay is pretty much the same soup with a couple of more ingredients, ones that I don't quite taste because all of the other flavours are too strong. After getting used to the controls, I played the same way. Ninja Gaiden Σ 2's story should be bigger, and I like the addition of Ayane and Momiji. I haven't played as Momiji yet, but playing as Ayane is pretty cool, and the weapon they gave her is very funtional. I was most excited about the Team Missions before playing them, I like the idea, but playing with Friendly AI that isn't very good at the game is a let down. Ofcourse, the game will allow you to play with friends online, but unless I find someone who is as skilled at Ninja Gaiden as much as I am, it'll either be the same as playing with the AI, or I find someone who finds the game a bit too easy. All in all, I like Ninja Gaiden Σ 2, but unless it includes Mission Mode in the full game, and I get a VGA cable for the PS3, I'll still play Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox 360 more.
And shaking the controller with Ryu does not make his pecks move.